The Appeal of Dude Ranch Vacations in Canada and the United States, 1920-1940
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2015-09-21 A Refreshing Contact with Something Real: The Appeal of Dude Ranch Vacations in Canada and the United States, 1920-1940
Herriman, Margaret
Herriman, M. (2015). A Refreshing Contact with Something Real: The Appeal of Dude Ranch Vacations in Canada and the United States, 1920-1940 (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/24995 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/2474 master thesis
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A Refreshing Contact with Something Real: the Appeal of Dude Ranch Vacations in Canada and the United States, 1920-40
by
Margaret Herriman
A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS
GRADUATE PROGRAM IN HISTORY
CALGARY, ALBERTA
AUGUST, 2015
© Margaret Herriman 2015
ii
ABSTRACT
This thesis examines the popularity of dude ranch vacations in the first half of the twentieth century. It demonstrates that the appeal of dude ranches rested on the appeal of the cowboy and the western environment, both of which relied on currents of antimodernism and discomfort with an increasingly urbanized world.
Popular literature disseminated the constructed image of the cowboy and the west to people in eastern Canada and the United States, and in Europe. A robust image emerged that ranchers drew on and modified in order to create the dude ranch experience. Easterners used the cowboy archetype as an avatar. Many slipped into the role only for a weeks on vacation, but others took it on as a career or lifestyle.
The following pages examine the creation of the cowboy and western images, and explore the ways in which individual ranchers interacted with and took on those images. iii
Table of Contents
ABSTRACT ...... ii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ...... 1 CHAPTER TWO: COWBOY AND WESTERN IMAGERY IN POPULAR LITERATURE ... 26 CHAPTER THREE: COWBOY AND RANCHING IMAGERY IN THE DUDE RANCHER MAGAZINE ...... 53 CHAPTER FOUR: THE STAMPEDE RANCH AND THE BUFFALO HEAD RANCH ...... 84 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION ...... 111 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 119
1
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
In 1936, Mrs. Harry Hart of the Dot S Dot guest ranch in Montana wrote
about the attraction of dude ranches. She told readers of the The Dude Rancher
magazine that “for a far less outlay in carfare or gas our guests could find most of
things we offer them, riding, hunting, fishing, camping amongst evergreens, outdoor
life of every kind, in their own or adjacent states or in eastern Canada; so what IS it
that brings them out to us at so much greater expense but that traditional ‘Lure of
the West’?”1 Though the lifestyle and activities of the cowboy are appealing to
easterners, it is the “warm and vital reality,” the “REAL ranch and REAL host ideal,”
that pull people west.2 In a book published two decades earlier called Four Dude
Hunters, two young men chat after a golf game about their upcoming vacations. One plans to head to Michigan for a break from urban work and bustle, but his friend suggests the Rocky Mountains in the more distant west: “If you love nature and can enjoy a real wilderness, come with me. I leave Friday … for the Rocky Mountains. In the course of a few days’ travel and week’s pack on horses and mules over the mountains, we shall come to the greatest of all wild places. There, perhaps, a hundred miles from civilization and the railroads, we shall hunt and fish… We shall camp in the snowy peaks.”3 This thesis will attempt to explore the sentiments these
writers express – why did tourists head to ranches in remote parts of the American
1 Mrs. Harry Hart, “Entertainment Problem on Dude Ranches,” The Dude Rancher, April, 1935, 10. 2 Hart, “Entertainment Problem,”10. 3 Percy Coleman Field, Four Dude Hunters, (S.I: s.n., 1918), 4. 2
and Canadian Wests between 1920 and 1940? Why did the cowboy hold such strong appeal? What made the environment and scenery of the West seem more alluring than that of the East?
Dude ranching, used interchangeably with the term guest ranching, is a leisure practice that has existed in the North American West since the end of the nineteenth century, appearing first in the United States and later in Canada. Though the boom years of dude ranching were in the 1920s,4 guest ranches still exist in the
western states and provinces. These ranches vary in character, but in general they
are a place for tourists to experience western activities, specifically ranching and
cowboy activities, in an authentically western location. At remote and picturesque
places, guests spend time in wilderness as well as ranch settings. Activities include trail rides, overnight pack trips, cattle drives, hiking, swimming, fishing, and hunting. A guest ranch is also a place that takes guests for multiday stretches, and provides food, accommodation and horseback riding for one price. Finally, guests are made to feel as though they are part of the working ranch and not at a resort.
Western hospitality, home cooking, fresh air and informality are an integral part of the dude ranch experience.5
The first formal guest ranches appeared in Montana and Wyoming in the
1870s, but it was common before that for a ranch to take in paying guests to make
4 Lawrence R. Borne, Dude Ranching: a Complete History, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983), 8. 5 Borne, Dude Ranching, 4. 3
ends meet almost as soon as it appeared in the West.6 Though most dude ranches were located in the American West, and the community was more cohesive and better organized there, by the twentieth century, tourists had outfits on both sides of the border to choose from. Dude ranches are still an enduring part of western tourism, and though their offerings have somewhat evolved over time, the underpinnings of the experiences they aim to provide have remained largely unchanged.7 These facilities allow tourists, mostly from the eastern states or provinces,8 and sometimes Europe to experience, for a few days or weeks, the
cowboy and western lifestyle. This thesis will argue, however, that the western
lifestyle offered and the cowboy that was displayed at the ranches were constructed,
and that the strong appeal of these ranches is and was based on mythic images of
the cowboy and the western wilderness landscape. The appeal of this image was not
restricted to easterners; dude ranchers themselves engaged and identified with it.
6 Borne, Dude Ranching, 19. 7 See, for example www.duderanch.org. The website of the Dude Ranchers Association exists to promote its 97 member ranches in 12 states and one province. The front page states that ‘Horses, Hats, History and Hospitality’ are the bedrock of dude ranches. The traditional offerings of horseback riding, hunting, hiking and rodeos remain, though some ranches now offer spa services and cooking and art classes. 8 Throughout this thesis, I reference ‘the East’ and ‘easterners,’ often placed in opposition to ‘the West’ and ‘westerners.’ The East refers to the settled states and provinces with large populations, large urban areas and a more substantial history of settlement. In terms of Canada, this east refers to Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes. In the United States, this refers to the Eastern Seaboard and the older states of the union. The West refers to the newer and less populated provinces and states that were understood to possess more wilderness and unsettled spaces. In terms of guest ranches and what people were attracted to, this area generally refers to the Rocky Mountains, and includes the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia and the states of Montana, Wyoming and Colorado. I take these terms from both vernacular portrayals in literature and advertising, as well as academic understandings. 4
To provide a basis for this argument, this study will focus on the years 1920-1940, and examine western and cowboy themed literature; The Dude Rancher, a magazine produced by The Dude Ranchers’ Association, a primarily American professional organization; and two Canadian dude ranches as case studies: the Buffalo Head
Ranch, owned and operated by George Pocaterra from 1924 to 1931, and the
Stampede Ranch, owned and operated by the married couple Guy Weadick and
Florence LaDue from 1920 to approximately 1940.
Because this study argues that dude ranches in the American and Canadian
Wests were selling the physical embodiment of a manufactured symbol and understanding, it exists at the crossroads of historical works. It rests on the foundations of those studies that delineate ranching life in the Canadian and
American Wests by scholars like Warren Elofson, David Breen, Simon Evans and
Terry Jordan to understand the industry in which dude ranching has its roots. This thesis also depends upon historians that have explored the ways in which urban
North Americans have been drawn to western and wilderness environments and experiences. As a basis for understanding the appeal of these images to twentieth century Canadians and Americans, this thesis uses the works of Roderick Nash, T.J.
Jackson Lears, Henry Nash Smith and Sharon Wall. This chapter will situate this study within the existing literature and explore the theoretical explanations underpinning the appeal of guest ranching in the North American Wests.
Few studies of dude ranching exist, and those that do exist focus on the
American West, excluding Canadian experiences. Historian Laurence R. Borne wrote the most comprehensive account, Dude Ranching: a Complete History, in 1983. 5
Borne’s volume focuses on the inception of dude ranching in the American West at
the end of the nineteenth century, explains how the leisure pursuit evolved into an industry, and delves into the state of contemporary guest ranches. Borne’s history is extremely detailed and it is based on extensive interviews with former dude ranchers and on private records. The account addresses the growth and development of the industry, the professional association of dude ranchers, and offers biographies of significant personalities in the industry. It also discusses the importance of the transportation industry to western ranchers, and the effect of national park administration and government regulation. Much of Borne’s work is a detailed paean to the 1920s and 1930s, which he defines as the golden age of dude ranching, when guests arrived by train and stayed for weeks and sometimes months on end. For Borne, the dude rancher is the ultimate western entrepreneur, an independent man constantly beleaguered by government and economic forces beyond his control. Borne concludes his work by lamenting the changes that dude ranches have been forced to make, and arguing that dudes had better experiences at ranches in the 1920s and 1930s when visits were months, rather than weeks long.
Even thirty years later, Borne’s work is still the most exhaustive study available. The industry is mentioned in other scholarly works, but generally as part of a larger study. Paul Voisey examines the Buffalo Head and Stampede Ranches in his work High River and the Times; Jennifer Hamblin and David Finch give space to the Buffalo Head Ranch in The Diva and the Rancher: The Story of Norma Piper and
George Pocaterra, and Donna Livingstone has a chapter about the Stampede Ranch in Cowboy Spirit: Guy Weadick and the Calgary Stampede. Other accounts come in the 6
form of personal memoirs, highly coloured with nostalgia and a desire to revisit a
perceived golden age. R.M. Patterson’s descriptions, for example, of his own
experiences as a dude rancher seem to be written as stories or tales, rather than
recounting of fact. In Dude Ranching Borne tells us of the difficulties associated with writing histories of the business. First, it was a private business endeavor, and many ranchers were not eager to make their business and financial records public, if they kept them at all. Additionally, dude ranching was based on the relationship between a host and guests, and Borne posits that many ranchers were unwilling to give up lists of their guests to public scrutiny. He also suggests that many scholars have preferred to focus on western recreation in the national parks because of the much wider range of available information.9 Though guest ranch studies may not be thick on the ground, a great many scholars have explored the cultural currents and images that created an atmosphere that fostered a North American love affair with the cowboy and the West, and the western wilderness.10
In order to understand the appeal of guest ranching and the western
landscape, it is instructive to examine underlying assumptions or attitudes present
in North American society. Though Pocaterra, Weadick and others in the business may not have specifically articulated these, it is clear that they capitalized on elements of popular and intellectual culture that celebrated the prevalent
9 Borne, Dude Ranching, 2-3. 10 See, for example, “‘Go West Young Man’” in Warren Elofson’s Frontier Cattle Ranching in the Land and Times of Charlie Russell, “West to Eden: The Romantic West, 1845-1885,” in R. Douglas Francis’s Images of the West: Changing Perceptions Prairies, 1690-1960,” Roderick Nash’s Wilderness and the American Mind, and Henry Nash Smith’s Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. 7
conceptions of the West and the cowboy. These conceptions were not necessarily accurate understandings of cowboy and ranching life. Paul F. Starr characterizes things like Wild West Shows and cowboy movies and literature as “ranch-derived” and “a far departure from genuine ranch or cowboy life.”11 Constructed images and
depictions of cowboys were incredibly popular and pervasive. Cowboys and the
West were the subject of many books, from cheap dime novels, to literary works, to
non-fiction wilderness narratives.12 During the twentieth century, cowboys were
eulogized in movies, radio programs and television series. These media portrayals
were aimed at and consumed by all sections of the population.13 Children idolized
cowboy heroes like the Lone Ranger after listening to his story on the radio or
seeing him on television. Adolescent boys also devoured dime novels dedicated to
the exploits of young western men. Adult men and women could read literary or
pulp adventures featuring ranchers. Women and teen girls also had serial pulp
publications like Ranch Romances and Rodeo Romances to glorify the masculine and
romantic qualities of western men. When the Philip Morris company managers were
looking for a new emblem for their filtered cigarettes in the 1950s, they chose the
cowboy. Filtered cigarettes had previously been seen as effeminate, but by using a
westerner as the face of their brand, Marlboro associated themselves with a man
11 Paul F. Starr, Let the Cowboy Ride: Cattle Ranching in the American West, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 154. 12 Warren Elofson, Frontier Cattle Ranching in the Life and Times of Charlie Russell, (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004), 26-30. 13 Mary-Ellen Kelm, A Wilder West: Rodeo in Western Canada, (Vancouver & Toronto: UBC Press, 2011), 118. 8
free from the constraints of urban life and capable of immense freedom and action.14
By using only a photo, Marlboro ads were able to convey a range of concepts to their
audience. Cowboy media was consumed avidly across demographics, and it
constructed a popular persona. Starr refers to the character of the cowboy as
“mythopoetic” and “chimerical,” to underscore his popular appeal and ability to
represent a range of values.15
Regardless of the accuracy of cowboy mythology, three intertwined elements
contributed to the appeal of the West. First, feelings of anti-modernism and
dissatisfaction with urban living made people look for places and experiences that
could ameliorate the effects of living in densely packed urban spaces that required
an elaborate and highly evolved code of manners and behaviour. This seeking
naturally led to the second contributing factor: romantic understandings of the wilderness as a space of purity and renewal, the ideal setting for these healing and rejuvenating experiences. Finally, modern living combined with a lack of wilderness
exposure was thought to be negatively affecting the development and expression of
masculinity, something men and women alike worried about. Cowboys, with their
tough physical jobs and complete lack of overt urban influence, were the antithesis
of those confined to urban spaces, and therefore could be seen as an idealized
masculine role model for both genders. Cowboys and the West, therefore, offered
anti-modern, wilderness and masculine experiences that the men and women of
civilized society craved as the antidote to modern life. Though dude ranchers and
14 Bruce A. Lohof, “The Higher Meaning of Marlboro Cigarettes,” A Journal of Popular Culture, Winter, 1969, 448. 15 Starr, Let the Cowboy Ride, 2. 9
visitors to guest ranches did not always articulate these feelings specifically, these
undercurrents help explain the immense and ubiquitous popularity of the cowboy.
As the industrial revolution fundamentally altered the North American
landscape, feelings that these rapid changes might not be universally beneficial
began to surface. Anti-modern sentiments began to appear in Europe and North
America in the latter half of the nineteenth century. As the world experienced an
explosion of urbanization, city dwellers began to express ambivalence about the
rapidly modernizing world they inhabited. Though progress, technological and
otherwise, was celebrated and pursued, an undercurrent of unease with the rapidly
changing world began to emerge. T. J. Jackson Lears refers to this feeling as
“overcivilization” and suggests that people began to doubt the primacy of
modernity’s “cult of science and technical rationality, its worship of material
progress.”16 American thinkers like Thoreau and Emerson were concerned that
American society was taking on an increasingly technological and monetary focus,
and that the engine of progress was discarding older values and patterns of living,
perhaps to the detriment of society.17 “Business values” in particular seemed to
infect every facet of society.18 Also distressing was the fact that these problems,
though they seemed to be omnipresent, were frustratingly vague and difficult to
define.19 Lears argues that as the nineteenth century progressed, modern life
16 T. J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Anti-modernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 4. 17 Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973), 86. 18 Nash, Wilderness 144. 19 Nash, Wilderness, 145. 10
seemed increasingly unreal. Spurred on by this ambivalence, monied urban dwellers
looked for ways to break away from the stifling confines of their city lives and
experience life more authentically.20 While people were uneasy and ambivalent,
they did not go so far as to suggest abandoning progress and returning to older
forms of living. Instead, they sought to find ways to moderate or mitigate the effects
of modernity.
Lears argues that what he calls a cult of the martial began to develop as
people sought solutions to their modern surroundings. This martial culture stressed
the importance of a strenuous life, and validated aggression and violence.21 Soldiers
and military men have been held in high regard across time and cultures.22 The appeal and regard, however, were expressed very strongly at the end of the nineteenth century, personifying “wholeness of purpose and intensity of experience.”23 Respectable men were increasingly circumscribed in their behaviour,
and the longing for opportunities that allowed more spontaneity of physical action,
a celebration of virile robustness, and the opportunity to escape “banal domesticity”
became more and more evident. Lear suggests that men began to long for a lifestyle
and situation that would allow them to participate in and celebrate the physicality of
their bodies, as urban society began to seem increasingly confining. In addition,
martial culture allowed men to participate in homosocial environments that were
understood to be more direct and simple than the intricate gendered rituals and
20 Lears, No Place of Grace, 5. 21 Lears, No Place of Grace, 118. 22 Lears, No Place of Grace, 98. 23 Lears, No Place of Grace, 98. 11
complexities of heterosocial modern culture.24 These actions were thought to be an
antidote to the “enervation and impotence of modernity.”25 The martial cult also suggested that male participation in physical and authentic activities could also be regenerative. By engaging in these kinds of activities even temporarily, city dwellers could rejuvenate themselves. Strenuous physical action and risk taking, Lears argues, became vital to reminding a person that he was “really alive.”26 Though the
fascination with the martial lifestyle began to intensify at the end of the nineteenth
century, it has lasted throughout the twentieth century and underpins many of our
cultural understandings.27
At the same time, people began looking towards rural living as a possible
counter to the perceived evils of modern urban society. Rural living exemplified the
American virtues that city life lacked, while also avoiding the conspicuous
decadence and poverty of urban spaces.28 As people watched the rapid urbanization
of America, and the movement of farmers into cities, the Country Life Movement
developed in order to bring the social and intellectual innovations of the city to
agrarian areas, but more importantly, to preserve the essential character of
America’s rural dwellers before it and they disappeared. William L. Bowers
identifies the yeoman myth as the belief that American farmers were an upright,
hard working, law abiding and intelligent mainstay of American society, and
24 Lears, No Place of Grace, 98. 25 Lears, No Place of Grace, 100. 26 Lears, No Place of Grace, 102. 27 Lears, No Place of Grace, 98. 28 Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920, (New York: Free Press, 2003), 105. 12
suggests that it underlay much of the Country Life Movement.29 In addition, a
substantial portion of those involved in the movement believed that farmers and
others living rural lives were more moral, simply by virtue of their more constant
exposure to nature and the land.30 A similar movement existed in Canada. David C.
Jones has identified the creation of a rural myth in agrarian periodicals that deemed
farming the natural state of man, and therefore the most suitable occupation,
leading to a state of natural moral superiority. Cities, alternatively, were considered
the source of many of the problems facing human society.31 These intellectual
currents, spread through American and Canadian cultures, encouraged men and
women to think of rural areas as essentially moral places, and therefore appropriate
to ameliorate the effects of urban living.
Though Lears focuses his arguments mainly on American understandings,
Sharon Wall identifies similar conceptions of urban spaces and modernity in her
book The Nurture of Nature: Childhood, Antimodernism, and Ontario Summer Camps,
1920-55. She identifies language that paints the city as a sterile and suffocating space that created Canadians who were “soft, habituated to technological comforts and alienated from ‘real’ experience.”32 In Canada, as well as the United States,
urban spaces were sites of essentially inauthentic living. She also quotes a 1939
29 William L. Bowers. The Country Life Movement in America, 1900-1920, (Port Washington, N.Y./London: Kennikat Press, National University Publications, 1974), 3-4. 30 Bowers, Country Life, 28. 31 David C. Jones, “‘There Is Some Power About the Land’: The Western Agrarian Press and Country Life Ideology,” in The Prairie West: Historical Readings, ed R. Douglas Francis and Howard Palmer, (Edmonton: Pica Pica Press, 1992), 457. 32 Sharon Wall, The Nurture of Nature: Childhood, Anti-modernism, and Ontario Summer Camps, 1920-55, (Vancouver & Toronto: UBC Press, 2009), 31. 13
source that warned against the damage of the modern ethos: “The mechanization of
industry, the corporate form of business, and the rapid increase of routine activities
in general seriously threaten to submerge initiative, self-expression, and creative
effort in the great masses of people.”33 Like Americans, Canadians began to look for ways to ameliorate the effects of city living on urban populations. Though it was not possible to escape city living completely, leisure and recreation choices could provide an antidote to the negative effects of modernity.34 Canada’s beautiful wilderness spaces provided the ideal setting for the recreation, a space where people could enjoy the authentic experiences they were missing from their daily urban lives. Wall’s investigation also reveals that though many of the original
Canadian summer camps catered to either boys or girls, societal currents focused on wilderness as a beneficial and necessary experience to both genders.35
Though Lears argues that the medieval knight with his chivalric code and
physical prowess was the most compelling martial figure to the anti-modernists,36 it
is easy to understand the appeal of the cowboy to a society plagued by anti-
modernity. The job of a cowboy is primarily physical and generally untroubled by modernity.37 The work experience of cowboys can certainly be said to have a
“wholeness of purpose and intensity of experience.”38 Cowboys on the range lived a
33 Wall, Nurture of Nature, 31. 34 Wall, Nurture of Nature, 32. 35 Wall, Nurture of Nature, 175, 190. 36 Lears, No Place of Grace, 101. 37 This is not necessarily true. Though ranch hands performed much of their work from horseback with tools that had been in use for centuries, ranch managers and owners embraced and employed scientific methods and technology designed to make their ranches as profitable as possible. 38 Lears, No Place of Grace, 98. 14 strenuous lifestyle that resulted in and relied on muscular, masculine bodies and a willingness and readiness to perform difficult and sometimes dangerous tasks.
Cowboys also inhabited a cultural space that allowed them to give in to their aggressive and sexual impulses. Gun fights, fist fights and whoring were all well known parts of the cowboy experience.39 In addition, the cowboy’s portrayal in popular literature painted him as a virile and romantic figure, who engaged in all kinds of daring exploits. To a circumscribed city dweller, especially a man living in a city and bound by cultural and physical limitations, the cowboy represented the antithesis of his banal everyday experiences. For women, the appeal of the cowboy was twofold: cowgirls, though less common than their male counterparts, existed nonetheless and women were able to see the athletic and wilderness activities of the
West as attainable for both genders; cowboys were also romantic figures in that they treated women exceptionally well, and were understood to be handsome and virile. Children that played at being cowboys were attracted to his heroism, adventure and skill with horse, gun and lariat. Cowboys, therefore, represented experiences impossible in the urban world, as well as the vigour and virility that men and women were missing from their own lives.
If the figure of the cowboy was understood as an antidote to modern living, so was his environment. As feelings of anti-modernism developed, so too did a growing fascination with wilderness. The original European immigrants to North
39 See Chapter 5 Two Legged Predators in Warren Elofson, Cowboys, Gentlemen and Cattle Thieves: Ranching on the Western Frontier, (Montreal & Kingston: McGill- Queen’s University Press, 2000), for a discussion of the extent to which cowboys were not law abiding. 15
America reviled the wilderness, conceptualizing it as something to be feared and to be conquered.40 As America grew increasingly urbanized, however, urban dwellers began to find an appreciation of the wilderness in and of itself. Originally, this appreciation was confined to Romantic thinkers, a small group of men who were in the position to conceive of wilderness as an aesthetic space.41 Roderick Nash argues that these men also imbued the wilderness with spiritual qualities, for “the solitude and total freedom of the wilderness created a perfect setting for either melancholy or exultation.”42 As the wilderness shrank, Romantic conceptions of it grew, and by the beginning of the twentieth century when America was more urban than rural,
“appreciation of the wilderness had spread from a relatively small group of
Romantic and patriotic literati to become a national cult.”43 The majority of
Americans could now look on the wilderness as a place to vacation, rather than as a hostile landscape that needed to be feared or overcome, and “the qualities of solitude and hardship that had intimidated many pioneers were likely to be magnetically attractive to their city dwelling grandchildren.”44 As the frontier and the pioneer disappeared, anti-modernist sentiments elevated the wilderness to an urban antidote. The wilderness represented a space where individuals could meet their challenges head-on, and defeat them with their own strength and merits. This understanding of the wilderness was juxtaposed with the city, where individuals
40 See chapters one and two in Nash, Wilderness. 41 Nash, Wilderness, 44. 42 Nash, Wilderness, 47. 43 Nash, Wilderness, 143. 44 Nash, Wilderness, 143. 16
seemed to be subsumed into a system against which the individual was powerless.45
The wilderness, particularly in the West, therefore took on a mythic status as a place
free from the perils of civilization, as well as a place of beauty and spiritual truth for
urban men and women.
The western wilderness was accorded a special place in the American
imagination. Not only was it the setting for the numerous cowboy and western
narratives, it was essential to understandings of American national identity. Henry
Nash Smith argues that the American nation was founded with the understanding
that a vacant continent was pulling their society ever westward.46 The idea of great
western open spaces manifested itself in popular understandings of the American
character, historical interpretations of America’s development and American
literature.47 Smith argues that when Thomas Jefferson sent the Lewis and Clark
exploration westward, the expedition was as much about new trade routes and
scientific discoveries, as it was about “the enactment of a myth that embodied the
future.”48 Expanding west was a way for America to actualize itself, and the “vacant”
West was a place where English society had never existed, a place where a truly
American society could develop and flourish.49 As American civilization pushed
west, two kinds of west developed: an agricultural West and a Wild West. These
wests were understood differently in the East, with the Wild West thought of as “an
45 Nash, Wilderness, 145. 46 Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: the American West as Symbol and Myth, (New York: Vintage Books, a division of Random House, 1950), 3. 47 Smith, Virgin Land, 4. 48 Smith, Virgin Land, 18. 49 Smith, Virgin Land, 48. 17
exhilarating region of adventure and comradeship in the open air.”50 Novels set in
this region portrayed heroes who possessed western skills like riding and shooting,
and who by virtue of their virility, courage, skill and individuality were also
quintessentially romantic.51 Though most people visited dude ranches when the
West could be considered tamed, the wilderness and remote setting of guest ranches allowed them to remain in the Wild West. This wilderness, therefore, was particularly appropriate for those looking to enjoy a piece of the cowboy lifestyle, while also seeking refuge from the crowded urban spaces of the East.
For a population plagued by anti-modern concerns and seeking a vacation space of beauty with the potential to engage in physical, athletic and unconstrained activities, the western wilderness landscape, and the cowboy within it, had a great deal to offer. Western wilderness was not only full of beautiful, wild scenery, it also held immense potential for authentic natural experiences. In his article “Against the
Grain: State-Making, Culture, and Geography in the American West,” Elliott West discusses the cross-border appeal of certain portions of the West for eastern tourists. First of all, he argues, the foremost appeal of the western landscape was its difference and unfamiliarity.52 On both sides of the Canadian-American border, tourists were drawn to landscapes that were outside of their experience. In spite of this, however, tourists had specific expectations of western landscapes, which they
wanted to correspond with their preconceived notions. West argues that they
50 Smith, Virgin Land, 55. 51 Smith, Virgin Land, 111. 52 Elliot West, “Against the Grain: State-Making, Cultures, and Geography in the American West,” in One West, Two Myths: A Comparative Reader, ed. Carol Higham and Robert Thacker, (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2004), 18. 18
wanted to experience unchanging vistas, rooted in certain moments in time, like pristine wildernesses, specific parts of Native culture, or mining and ranching towns.53 In short, eastern tourists came to the West to impose their own narrative on the landscape.54 These western experiences were, and remain, essentially
artificial. The areas of western Canada and the United States that are most often
celebrated as wild and untamed are intensely commercialized and civilized.55
Tourists travelled west looking to engage with authentic experiences and a
disappearing wilderness, but not to abandon modernity altogether. Sharon Wall
suggests that wilderness involvement allows people to escape from modernity, but
that it also helps them to adjust, and at heart, bolster modernity.56 On the surface,
these experiences seem to be a rejection of modernity, but in reality are
commoditised, and are only possible within the structure of a modern, capitalist
economy. Wall also suggests that these experiences help people to mediate and
adjust to modernity. Instead of abandoning modernity, wilderness experiences
allow people to spend longer amounts of time in cities.57 Dude ranches, with their
pack trips through majestic mountain passes and opportunities for intense physical
labour were looked upon by guests as a temporary way to engage with nature, but
were never meant to be permanent.
Guest ranching, then, fitted comfortably into this narrative of an artificial
eastern existence imposed on a western landscape. Guest ranching offered tourists a
53 West, “Against the Grain,” 18. 54 West, “Against the Grain,” 20. 55 West, “Against the Grain,” 19. 56 Wall, Nurture of Nature, 5. 57 Wall, Nurture of Nature, 15. 19
chance to experience a supposedly untouched wilderness. Both of the ranches in
this study were situated in the majestic foothills of the Canadian Rockies, an area
that is undeniably beautiful, but was hardly unsettled at the time the guest ranches
operated. In fact, one of the selling points of the ranches was their dual proximity to
the High River rail station to the east and untouched wilderness to the west.58 All
that mattered to the guests, however, was the illusion of distance. At the same time,
guests could experience as much of ranching as they cared to, without the burden,
discomfort and tedium of the actual cowboy profession. Eastern tourists did not
seek the realities of ranch life; they sought the mythic image of the cowboy or
cowgirl. In his article, West argues that though the main attraction of the Calgary
Stampede is a highly competitive rodeo, “just as alluring are the attendant
attractions of walking the streets in western duds and spilling beer with actual cowboys in saloons with names like Outlaws and the Golden Garter.”59 Then, as now,
the attraction of the West was taking on a perceived western role.
Part of the attraction of the West was the explicit masculinity of the cowboy
figure. Anti-modernism sparked feelings of a need for more authentic experiences
and an antidote to urban modernity, but it also created a crisis of masculinity.
Historian E. Anthony Rotundo argues that beginning in the nineteenth century an
understanding of physical masculinity began to emerge. An essential part of men’s
natures was contained in their physical prowess, and this was fostered in part by
58 “Cowboy Life on a Western Ranch,” June 17, 1920, The Best of the Times: The Roarin’ Twenties, (High River: Century Books, 2002), 82. 59 West, “Against the Grain,” 20. 20
fresh air and vigorous exercise.60 This new understanding of masculinity celebrated
the animal impulses peculiar to men and suggested that men should be interested in
the physical. At the same time, however, they should be masters of their impulses. In
contrast, work that occupied the brain but not the body was seen to drain the
energy and force of a man.61 This understanding emerged at the same time that
North America was urbanizing, and city living and modernity were thought to be
sapping the essential essence of middle class men, most of whom now worked jobs
that were primarily cerebral, rather than physical. Men and women shared the
concern that many men were now living an essentially harmful life.
Understandings of masculinity in relation to the modern world remained
conflicted throughout the twentieth century. Christopher Dummitt argues that in
the post-war period, Canadian culture suggested that being modern was harmful to
innate or basic masculinity.62 Despite its deleterious effects, modernity could,
however, be mediated. Dummitt examines Vancouver mountaineers, and suggests
that these middle class men sought to escape the stifling confines of the suburbs and
their white-collar jobs by engaging in mountaineering. This sport is inherently risky
and demands strength and clear-headedness from its participants, and these men were therefore able to regain what they understood as a missing element of masculinity in their lives.63 Like mountaineering, dude ranching offered a
60 E. Anthony Rotundo, “Body and Soul: Changing Ideals of American Middle-Class Manhood, 1770-1920,” in Journal of Social History, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Summer 1984), 26. 61 Rotundo, “Body and Soul,” 29. 62 Christopher Dummitt, The Manly Modern: Masculinity in Postwar Canada, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 6. 63 Dummitt, Manly Modern, 78. 21
wilderness space for men to escape from the demands of modernity and to engage
in physical and sometimes risky activities. And like mountaineering, guest ranching
takes place in an explicitly non-urban atmosphere.
The cowboy was an explicitly masculine figure and offered an antidote to
many of the problems associated with modern masculinity. Despite his explicit
masculinity, however, the cowboy was also a romantic figure with broad appeal, and
the ubiquity of his person and lifestyle made him accessible to men, women and
children. The cowboy was not confined in the same way that urban dwellers were,
and represented an avatar that was able to transcend the limitations imposed on
urbanites of all ages. Virile and athletic impulses and actions that were necessarily
stifled by city living were unrestricted in the wilderness environment of the West.
Dude ranches made the cowboy lifestyle eminently available to urban dwellers. For
anywhere from a week to a whole summer, men, women and children could spend
time away from the city and live out their masculine, romantic and nature fantasies,
many of which, like horseback riding, were understood to appeal to almost
everyone. For men, the cowboy offered the chance to step into a ready-made exemplar of masculinity to explore the parts of themselves that were inhibited by city living. In addition, ranches offered the chance for men to enjoy a wholesome family vacation, while also perhaps indulging in homosocial, manly activities like hunting trips. For women, western physical activities like riding, roping and hiking were also available, as well as the chance to spend time in the presence of a romantic masculine figure. For children of both sexes, dude ranches offered the chance to have the kinds of adventures they loved to read about, listen to, and 22 watch. The cowboy, therefore, offered a way for all urban dwellers to live out western and nature fantasies, regardless of their age or gender. Additionally, the western landscape and lifestyle were thought to be especially wholesome for men, women and children,64 and therefore guest ranches offered the dual draw of health and amusement.
Much of the discussion of imagery and sentiment in this thesis suggests that
Canadians and Americans perceived cowboys, ranching culture and wilderness in the same way, and experienced similar anxieties around modernity and wilderness.
Though Canadians and Americans possibly envisioned frontier spaces differently, I will argue that western and cowboy identity, both real and perceived was very much a cross-border entity. At the same time, many understandings of the rural-urban divide can be seen in an overarching popular culture that existed on both sides of the border. The dime novels and western films, for example, that fostered a love of cowboys in many were equally well-liked and available in the urban areas of Canada and the United States. William H. Katerberg has identified what he calls a “common imaginative, mythic ground shared by Canadians and Americans regarding the
West.”65 It is within this common ground that the myth of the cowboy is situated.
64 See, for example, Mark Conroy, “The Stream-Lined Vacation,” The Dude Rancher, September, 1935, 9 and the caption of a photo in the The Dude Rancher stating “CHILDREN ENJOY THE CARE-FREE LIFE OF THE DUDE RANCH. Plenty of Fresh Air, Fresh Milk, Fresh Vegetables from the Ranch Gardens – A Good Saddle Pony – Lots of Exercise. That’s What Puts the Old Pepper In the Children on the Dude Ranches.” Photo of children, credited to Valley Ranch, The Dude Rancher, June, 1933, 12. 65 William H. Katerberg, “A Northern Vision: Frontiers and the West in The Canadian and American Imagination,” in One West, Two Myths II, ed. C.L. Higham & Robert Thacker, (Calgary: University of Calgary Press), 67. 23
In addition, and perhaps more importantly, the dude ranchers themselves
thought of their industry as regional, rather than national. The Dude Rancher’s
Association strongly protested the use of the term dude ranch when it was used at
resorts or travel destinations that they felt did not merit the title. Dude ranches,
they argued, were an inherently western activity and authentic guest ranches could
be found in the western states and Canada. Resorts calling themselves dude ranches
situated in the East or the Midwest, however, were most definitely not dude
ranches.66 By 1937, the S Half Diamond Ranch in British Columbia had joined the
Dude Ranchers’ Association, and by 1947, resolutions made by the Dude Ranchers’
Association refer to itself as “representing dude ranches in nine states and
Canada.”67 For the dude ranchers then, their proximity to the Rocky Mountains and
traditional ranching country were more important than national borders.
It is also worth remembering that during the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century, the western provinces and north western states had more in
common with one another than they did with eastern counterparts. Many scholars
have argued for a cross-border, regional identity, rather than two separate national
experiences for everyone from ranchers to women. In 1942, when conducting a
study of the Northern Plains, a Canadian scholar and an American scholar, working
under the auspices of the North American Regionalization Project, did not
66 See, for example, I. H. Larom writing about the New Jersey dude ranch that borrowed the name of his Montana ranch, which Larom calls ‘a dirty trick,’ and resulted in much confusion. I. H. Larom, “President’s Page,” The Dude Rancher, July & August, 1938, 25. 67 “Resolutions,” The Dude Rancher, January, 1947, 13. 24
differentiate between the states and provinces located within the Great Plains.68 In
addition, many, if not most, of the guests of the Stampede and Buffalo Head ranches
were American, and they did not differentiate between the experiences of Canadian
and American cowboys. Canadian and American ranchers and dude ranchers also
identified with the myth of the cowboy in similar ways, and thought of themselves
as similar to these mythical men in equal measure. This study accepts that it is
worth thinking of the cowboy as a western figure, tied to a land of plains, foothills,
mountains and cattle, rather than to a specifically American or Canadian experience.
Overall this thesis explores the appeal of the guest ranch and the cowboy.
With an understanding of the cultural currents that fostered an atmosphere of
appreciation and admiration for the cowboy and the West, chapter ii will examine
the myth of the cowboy and the wilderness as it is found in the popular western
novels written at the end of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth
century. It will contend that these novels created a fully idealized understanding of the cowboy and his environment. Tourists and dude ranchers alike shared this understanding, which allowed dude ranchers to envision the kind of experiences their guests were looking for. The third chapter will look at the ways in which the
dude ranch industry, through the Dude Ranchers’ Association publication The Dude
Rancher, used the imagery of the cowboy and the West to attract and retain clients.
It will also explore the ways in which the ranchers engaged with the myth
68 Molly P. Rozum, “The Spark that Jumped the Gap”: North America’s Northern Plains and the Experience of Place,” in One West, Two Myths: A Comparative Reader, ed. Carol Higham and Robert Thacker, (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2004), 133. 25 personally and as a group. Dude ranchers were not just providing an experience to their guests – to some degree, they themselves were living that experience. The fourth and final chapter will examine the lives of two Canadian dude ranchers,
George Pocaterra and Guy Weadick. Both Pocaterra and Weadick let a love of the
West and cowboys guide their personal and professional lives, and this chapter will attempt to explain how these men negotiated living and selling a manufactured image. 26
CHAPTER TWO: COWBOY AND WESTERN IMAGERY IN POPULAR LITERATURE
George Pocaterra was drawn from Italy to western Canada because of
“romantic stories about Canada.”1 The western literature that so impressed
Pocaterra also had a great impact on the creation and popularity of guest ranches.
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, popular culture offered a steady
parade of literature that portrayed cowboys and the West. Some of this literature
was romantic in nature, offering sentimental portraits of the landscape and those
who dwelt within it. Others were sensational in nature, offering thrilling narratives
of rough and tumble heroes. Through exposure to this literature, inhabitants of
eastern North America built an imagined understanding of the West. This portrait was nuanced enough to appeal to people of all ages and both genders, but monolithic enough that a cohesive understanding emerged. It was this constructed narrative that drew tourists to guest ranches that offered the chance to try out the cowboy lifestyle for themselves. This chapter will survey five western novels in order to examine some of the themes, tropes and images from which eastern audiences constructed their images of cowboys and the West. This chapter will also highlight the ways in which these western images fit within the anti-modern search for authenticity, physically strenuous experiences, and respite from urban surroundings. Dude ranchers, including Pocaterra and Weadick, capitalized on this western imagery to offer their guests the same kinds of experiences.
1 George Pocaterra, as told to Norma Piper Pocaterra, “The Son of the Mountains,” August 15, 1970, pg 6, GA M6340-181. 27
It is difficult to overstate the popularity of cowboy and western stories in
eastern North America and even Europe. In the collective imagination, the West was
an idyllic space, separate from the rest of the world. When British journalist Alistair
Cooke travelled through North America in 1941-42, he summed up the attitudes thusly: “the West has always had for Americans the enchantment of a paradise away from the nagging realism of the familiar.”2 This paradise was the setting for a
plethora of novels and stories that can be divided into three categories: nature
tracts, dime novels and romantic fiction. Nature travelogues began to appear in the
nineteenth century, written by those who had traveled through the wilds of western
North America, especially the northwestern states and western Canada. These
descriptions emphasized the differences between the East, a region considered
tamed, and the unpopulated West. This western wilderness was romantically
described as large, untouched by man and full of possibility.3 The romantic tradition,
which held that civilization was not man’s natural state, and that wilderness
represented freedom from the dulling influence of society, and a place to find God
and personal freedom, strongly influenced the creation of these narratives.4 These
books struck a chord with easterners plagued by anti-modern concerns, and created
a common conception of the West.
2 Alistair Cooke, The American Home Front, 1941-1942, (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006), 142. 3 Warren Elofson, Frontier Cattle Ranching in the Life and Times of Charlie Russell, (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004), 26. 4 R. Douglas Francis, Images of the West: Changing Perceptions of the Prairies, 1690- 1960, (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1989), 38-39. 28
This popularly constructed vision of the west became the setting for fictional
stories that chronicled the adventures of men and women brave and strong enough
to negotiate the western wilderness. The mass-produced, formulaic dime novels
published by Erastus Beadle that first appeared in 1860 were incredibly popular
and far-reaching.5 Novellas brimmed with action, adventure and improbable feats of
heroism. Henry Nash Smith argues that these works were devoid of literary quality,
but because they catered so strongly to the imaginations of their readers, they can
be seen as “an objectified mass dream.”6 By examining the content of these stories,
Nash Smith states that we can know “the dream life of a vast inarticulate public.”7
The heroes of these novels were young men, brave, handsome and strong, who
moved through a beautiful and majestic landscape, and solved their problems using
only their wits and physical strength.8 Some stories even had heroines rather than a hero, who also had a high degree of physical prowess, but could also be beautiful and provide a convenient love interest for the hero.9 North Americans, especially
adolescent boys, devoured these stories.10 Once western dime novels had
established their popularity, romantic novels about the West became popular at the
end of the nineteenth century. These novels were longer, more complex and aimed
at an older and better read audience. Though these books were not as simple as
dime novels, they catered to similar impulses in their readers. The western
5 Elofson, Frontier Cattle Ranching, 27. 6 Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth, (New York: Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, 1950) 101. 7 Nash Smith, Virgin Land, 101. 8 Nash Smith, Virgin Land, 111. 9 Nash Smith, Virgin Land, 131. 10 Elofson, Frontier Cattle Ranching, 30. 29
landscape highlighted and developed individuals and freed them from any
constraint except what they placed upon themselves.11 Though these stories were
widely read, they never reached the heights of popularity that the dime novels did.
This chapter will analyze five case study books written in the first half of the twentieth century. Owen Wister’s romantic novel The Virginian, first published in
1902, is often cited as the book that rescued the western genre from magazines and created the plot, themes and tropes that all westerns written in the twentieth century draw from.12 Wister’s iconic cowboy, only referred to as the Virginian, has
set the standard for heroic cowboy characters. Wister’s book was very popular, and
widely read, and is therefore an excellent source to examine for cowboy and
western imagery. Ralph Connor’s The Sky Pilot, first published in 1899 is a western
story set in the foothills of Alberta. This literary tale features a specifically Canadian
landscape, and was also widely read, so it is ideal for analysis. This chapter will also
examine two books written by widely read authors Zane Grey and Max Brand that
can be seen as the twentieth century heirs to the dime novel tradition. Both of these
authors published a long list of what can be termed formulaic westerns, and I have
selected two that I consider typical. From Zane Grey, I chose his popular 1912 work
Riders of the Purple Sage and from Max Brand, Alcatraz, published in 1923. Finally, I
chose a children’s book written by a former children’s librarian at the Calgary Public
11 Elofson, Frontier Cattle Ranching, 30. 12 For example, Melody Graulich, “Monopolizing The Virginian (or, Railroading Wister),” in Montana: The Magazine of Western History, (Vol. 56, No. 1, Spring, 2006), 31-32. 30
Library. The Mystery Horse was explicitly written for children and published in 1950.
It tells a story of high adventure that includes guests at a dude ranch.
Though people are at the centre of western stories, the landscape itself is
almost always a romantic character. Written in the romantic tradition, these works
emphasize the lack of civilization, and envision the West as a place unsullied by
civilization. This distance from the settled world allows for experiences of solitude,
serenity and connection to the innate spirituality of the wilderness that would be
impossible elsewhere.13 Because the people in these stories traverse, but do not
change the land, those who move through the West do so directly and authentically.
Though books like The Virginian portray a romance between a man and a woman,
the more central romance of the story is the relationship between man and the
landscape. This landscape is a necessary ingredient in these books, because only in
the plains, foothills and mountains of the West can the characters grow and
transcend the urban strictures of the East.
In The Sky Pilot, Ralph Connor opens with a description of the Albertan
foothills of the Rockies, his setting for the book. Describing the way the prairies rise
into the mountains, Connors wrote that the foothills “extend for about a hundred
miles only, but no other hundred miles of the great west are so full of interest and
romance.”14 When a missionary arrives in the community, the narrator takes him to watch the sunset. Riding up to the top of a hill they have a panoramic view of the prairies at dusk. The narrator describes their view:
13 Francis, Images of the West, 39-40. 14 Ralph Connor, Sky Pilot: a Tale of the Foothills, (London: Houghton and Stoughton, 1901), 11. 31
Behind us stretched the prairie, sweeping out level to the sky and cut by the winding coulee of the Swan [River]. Great long shadows from the hills were lying upon its yellow face, and far at the distant edge the gray haze was deepening into purple. Before us lay the hills, softly curving like the shoulders of great sleeping monsters, their tops still bright, but separating valleys full of shadow. And there, far beyond them, up against the sky, was the line of the mountains – blue, purple, and gold, according as the light fell upon them… We stood long without a word or movement, filling our hearts with the silence and the beauty, till the gold in the west began to grow dim.15
Both characters are unaccustomed to the landscape, and the beauty of the area, and
their ability to enjoy it in a state of near solitude, affects them on a spiritual level.
Connor’s lyric writing creates a vivid image of the western landscape, and the
authenticity and simplicity of this writing would have been very appealing to those
who spent most of their time in urban settings and lacked regular exposure to these
kinds of vistas.
The romance of the landscape is highlighted at the end of The Virginian when
the protagonist takes his new bride into the mountains for their honeymoon. He
chooses the location not just because of its beauty, but also because of the deep
connection he feels. One of the chief draws of the mountains and foothills is its
remoteness and distance from civilization:
They passed through the gates of the foot-hills, following the stream up among them. The outstretching fences and widely trodden dust were no more… as the sum of the miles and hours grew, they were glad to see the road less worn with travel, and the traces of men passing from sight… Full solitude was around them now, so that their words grew scarce, and when they spoke it was with low voices.16
It is not just the seclusion of the area that attracts the Virginian. It is also the beauty of the mountains. The Virginian led his new bride “upward through trail and canyon,
15 Connor, Sky Pilot, 50. 16 Owen Wister, The Virginian, (New York: The MacMillan Company), 1953, 419-420. 32
through the unfooted woods and along dwindling streams to their headwaters, lakes
lying near the summit of the range, full of trout, with meadows of long grass and a
thousand flowers and above these the pinnacles of rock and snow.”17 The Virginian is vindicated in his choice of bride because she is as affected by and attracted to the landscape as he is. Wister is ostensibly writing about the love between a man and a woman, but the characters are more affected by the romance of the landscape than by one another in these passages.
For both Wister and Connor, the land is romantic partly because of the beauty of the surroundings, but also because of the character of the men that inhabit the land: “Here are the homes of the ranchmen,” Connor notes, “in whose wild, free, lonely existence there mingles much of the tragedy and comedy, the humor and the pathos, that go to make up the romance of life.”18 Connor’s descriptions of the
breathtaking scenery make it clear that this part of the country is special, and
attracts and inspires a certain kind of men. Some of the men that live in this land are
“the most enterprising, the most daring, of the people of the old lands. The broken,
the outcast, the disappointed, these too have found their ways to the ranches among
the Foothills.”19 The landscape is romantic because of the way it looks, but also
because of the men that it inexorably draws.
The landscape also lends events a kind of gravitas and importance. Because of the backdrop, narratives are lent a significance that other events may not have. In both Sky Pilot and The Virginian the narrators are eastern men, men who love and
17 Wister, The Virginian, 428. 18 Connor, Sky Pilot, 12. 19 Connor, Sky Pilot, 12. 33
admire the West and the men that dwell there, but they are inherently outsiders.
This otherness allows them to fully appreciate the difference between their world
and that of the West. The dependence of these men on their western guides and hosts allows them to fully express the independence and prowess of the cowboys around them. Their otherness also serves to highlight the vastness and majesty of
the environment. Because they are unaccustomed to their surroundings, they are
able to describe in minute detail what they are experiencing, and therefore create an
image that is eminently understandable to eastern audiences. In addition, these
narrators are able to move successfully within this exotic locale, with the help of
trusted cowboy guides. A person living in an urban environment could aspire to the
experiences of the narrator, and perhaps envision a stay at a guest ranch as a way to
access the western landscape. Men, women and children were intrigued; thus the
appeal of vacationing in the west crossed the age and gender spectrum.
Along with the imagery of the wilderness, this literature also helped to create, reinforce and solidify the figure of the cowboy. This constructed image contained not only an understanding of the physical vitality of westerners, but a picture of the cowboy character and code of honour and ethics as well. Thanks to portrayals like that found in Theodore Roosevelt’s Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail,
cowboys began to take on a kind of larger-than-life status. First published in 1888, the future president’s work chronicles his time in the American West. Roosevelt can be thought of as the original dude, and his enthusiastic tales of ranching country and customs created a portrait of western life for many eastern and urban readers. Note his sketch of the character of ranchers: 34
…it is the life of men who live in the open, who tend their herds on horseback, who go armed and ready to guard their lives by their own prowess, whose wants are very simple and who call no man master. Ranching is an occupation like those of vigorous primitive pastoral peoples, having little in common with the humdrum, workaday business world of the nineteenth century; and the free ranchman in his manner of life shows more kinship to an Arab sheik than to a sleek city merchant or tradesman.20
Compared to the urban life of the East, ranching is exotic, and it offers a more authentic and dynamic existence than that of the city or densely settled area. The comparison to an Arab sheik also suggests that those who are able to succeed in the
West have a kind of innate nobility. These portrayals permeated western literature, especially in books like The Virginian and Sky Pilot, because these narrators, like
Roosevelt, were urbanites new to the West, and so they were able to contrast the cowboys around them to familiar urban, eastern men. Connor’s narrator is introduced to westerners as “‘My tenderfoot cousin from the effete,’” by his cowboy cousin Jack Dale, and the narrator is pleased and honored to be allowed to “join their circle, which, to a tenderfoot, was usually closed.” 21 Wister’s narrator is also
judged to be a tenderfoot, and is honest about his desire to learn about the West: “I
was inveterate in laying my inexperience of Western matters bare to all the world,
begging to be enlightened upon rattlesnakes, prairie-dogs, owls, blue and willow
grouse, sage-hens, how to rope a horse or tighten the front cinch of my saddle.”22
And it is the Virginian who patiently guides him through western life, teaching him
about his surroundings, no matter how he blunders. Dude ranches functioned the
20 Theodore Roosevelt, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail, (Minneola, New York: Dover Publications, 2009), 6. 21 Connor, Sky Pilot, 25. 22 Wister, The Virginan, 48. 35
same way as Jack Dale, and mediated the West, while at the same time, mentoring
access to an exclusive and desirable club.
At the foundation of the cowboy is his physicality. The cowboy’s profession
requires athleticism, skill and dexterity. Every book examined in this chapter spends some time describing his physical presence and abilities. Wister’s narrator recounts the first time that he sees the Virginian, who, with a crowd of other cowboys, is attempting to catch a wild pony:
For now he climbed down with the undulations of a tiger, smooth and easy, as if his muscles flowed beneath his skin. The others had all visibly whirled the rope, some of them even shoulder high. I did not see his arm lift or move. He appeared to hold the rope down low, by his leg. But like a sudden snake I saw the noose go out its length and fall true; and the thing was done. As the captured pony walked in with a sweet, church-door expression… a passenger remarked, “That man knows his business.”23
This introduction to the Virginian, the epitome of cowboys, demonstrates his quiet,
yet prodigious skill. He performs his task with ease, and he does not congratulate
himself after it is over. He simply makes a difficult task look easy, and with a
minimum of fuss.
When Connors introduces Jack Dale, the audience receives a similar testimony of his physical prowess and easy grace:
I remember well how my heart beat with admiration of easy grace with which he sailed down upon us in the loose-jointed cowboy style, swinging his own bronco and the little cayuse he was leading for me into the circle of the wagons, careless of ropes and freight and other impedimenta. He flung himself off before his bronco had come to a stop, and gave me a grip that made me sure of my welcome.24
23 Wister, The Virginian, 2. 24 Connor, Sky Pilot, 14. 36
Jack Dale is carefree and fit, and like the Virginian, he makes a difficult task look easy. He also delights in his physicality and his ability to use his muscular body.
Instead of entering the circle of wagons slowly and carefully, he makes a daring entrance that showcases his strength and abilities. For urbanites who felt constrained by their desk jobs and lack of opportunities to test or maintain their own fitness, this kind of a life had immense appeal. Jack Dale and his kind represented an aspirational figure for those who felt restricted by their daily life.
Dude ranches allowed men a week or two to live like cowboys.
Cowboys, like strong young men anywhere living without the influence of women of all ages and older men, are likely to care less about social niceties. Connor describes the foremost cowboy in the region: “He was a perfect picture of a man, and was in all western virtues easily first. He could rope a steer, bunch cattle, play poker or drink whiskey to the admiration of his friends and the confusion of his foes, of whom he had a few.”25 This man, only known as “The Duke,”26 has mastered the necessary physical and social skills to excel in the western environment. As I will discuss in further depth later, cowboys placed women upon a pedestal, but they actually had very few interactions with them. Instead, they lived within a homosocial environment that celebrated physicality, fun and competition of all kinds. Connor’s narrator explains: “Vices they had, all too apparent and deadly, but they were due rather to the circumstances of their lives rather than to the native tendencies of their hearts.”27 This homosocial environment also fostered deep
25 Connor, Sky Pilot, 28. 26 Connor, Sky Pilot, 28. 27 Connor, Sky Pilot, 32. 37 friendships between men, bonds that might not be possible in mixed company.
Connor writes about the relationship between two men: “When… The Pilot fell sick,
Bill nursed him like a mother… The love between the two was most beautiful, and, when I find my heart grow hard and unbelieving in men and things, I let my mind wander back to a scene that I came upon…”28 These two men care deeply for one another and meet human emotional needs for intimacy in a way that seems pure and natural. It is easy to understand why urban men would have found this environment so appealing. In western territories, the complicated manners and rituals of polite society are missing. Instead, interactions are honest and unadulterated, fueled by individual motivations, rather than molded by convention.
For those who chafed at these restrictions, the West was held up as a place of freedom and unity of thought and deed.
Like descriptions of the western wilderness landscape, descriptions of cowboys almost always portray them as romantic figures, sometimes explicitly. In the introduction to The Virginian, for example, Wister calls the cowboy “a hero without wings” and the “the last romantic figure upon our soil.”29 This succinctly sums up his description of the cowboy: a young man who was rough and tumble, hard living, yet possessed of a kind of honour and integrity above and beyond that of modern day. As Wister writes: “If he gave his word, he kept it; Wall Street would have found him behind the times. Nor did he talk lewdly to women; Newport would have thought him old-fashioned.”30 Wister’s picture of the ‘cowpuncher’ fits
28 Connor, Sky Pilot, 279. 29 Wister, The Virginian, x. 30 Wister, The Virginian, xi. 38 comfortably into narratives of anti-modernism. The cowboy does not suffer the existential crises of those trapped in urban environments, seeking authentic experiences; all of his experiences are inherently authentic. In addition, Wister’s cowboy is not constrained by the complicated social rituals of the civilized world.
His civility is older, simpler and more masculine. This romantic figure appealed to urbanized people that felt that this kind of lifestyle had become unattainable for those living in densely packed spaces.
Though cowboys are not constrained by the civility of the eastern world they do live with a code of honour and ethics. This code is peculiar to the West and taken seriously by those who live there. When describing the cowboys who teach him the ways of the range, Connor’s narrator says, “through all not a man of them ever failed to be true to his standard of honor in the duties of comradeship and brotherhood.”31
Wister’s cowboy, for example, asks the eastern narrator about religion, and after hearing that there are fifteen separate Christian denominations, suggests that there is something simpler and less complicated:
“Do you think there ought to be fifteen varieties of good people?... There ain’t fifteen. There ain’t two. There’s one kind. And when I meet it, I respect it. It is not praying nor preaching that has ever caught me and made me ashamed of myself, but one or two people I have knowed that never said a superior word to me. They thought more o’ me than I deserved, and that made me behave better than I naturally wanted to.”32
Wister’s cowboy’s understanding of good is not complicated by theological intricacies but is defined by a person’s actions and influence. These ethics can be more broadly understood by applying this principle. For the cowboy, doing what is
31 Connor, Sky Pilot, 32. 32 Wister, The Virginian, 183. 39 right is important, not what is polite or necessarily even legal. This is evident when the Virginian tracks and catches three horse thieves. Rather than turn them over to the corrupt state government for whatever justice they might dispense, he hangs them himself. He does not do it lightly, but is resolute about his actions. He tells the narrator that no matter the difficulty, “a man goes through with his responsibilities.”33 The Virginian does not delight in dispensing capital punishment, but he understands the importance of order.
One of the things that makes the cowboy code of ethics so appealing is that cowboys have the mental and physical ability to do what they believe is right.
Whether this is chasing down rustlers, protecting a lady or saving a defenseless animal, the cowboy is able to actualize his conceptions of right and wrong. This immediate connection between thought and deed, especially moral thought and deed, would have been very appealing to the readers of these books who inhabited a world that seemed to constrain them at every turn. The Virginian understands that the theft of the horses is wrong, and so he tracks the thieves and administers justice in a direct, permanent and, most importantly, personal way. The Virginian is not limited to an official, often slow and ineffective justice system, rife with errors and corruption. Instead, he is able to be an agent of justice, a direct force of good, free from the constraints of the closeness of urban living, which forces reliance on a more organized yet slower and painstaking form of justice. For the Virginian, justice is quick and true.
33 Wister, The Virginian, 340. 40
A less fraught example of this understanding of justice happens when the
Duke of Sky Pilot stops a fight during a poker game. After a French freighter loses six months wages to the Duke, the furious freighter
accused his smiling opponent of being a cheat, and was proceeding to demolish him with one mighty blow. But The Duke, still smiling, and without moving from his chair, caught the descending fist, slowly crushed the fingers open, and steadily drew the Frenchman to his knees, gripping him so cruelly in the meantime that he was forced to cry aloud in agony.”34
The Duke then tells the man he should learn how to play and how to choose his
opponents, and then returns all of the freighter’s money. In this situation, the
cowboy refuses to prey on the ignorant, nor does he allow himself to be attacked.
Instead, he honourably returns the money, proving his superior ethics, intellect,
strength and self-control. The freighter nurses his wounds, takes his money, and
leaves. In this situation, the cowboy takes direct action against a person who has
insulted him and makes it clear he will not tolerate such disrespect. He is not,
however, cruel in his chastisement. He is compassionate without seeming weak.
Once again, the cowboy has the physical strength and mental abilities to follow the
cowboy code of honour and ethics.
Cowboys are also imbued with bravery and a willingness to attempt tasks
that others would find too trying or dangerous. They are able to take these tasks on
because of their innate determination and physical prowess. In Riders of the Purple
Sage, a cowboy follows a dangerous band of rustlers with only a horse and his dogs
through a forbidding mountain landscape. The cowboy, reflecting on his mission,
feels confident of his eventual success, “for at first it had been a reckless
34 Connor, Sky Pilot, 29-30. 41
determination to achieve something at any cost, and now it resolved itself into an
adventure worthy of all his reason and cunning, and keenness of eye and ear.”35
Later, in his trek up the canyons and mountain passes to find the rustlers, the
cowboy is shot at by one of the rustlers. Rather than flee, he leaps to action: “The
bullet zipped through the sage brush. Flying bits of wood struck [the cowboy], and
the hot, stinging pain seemed to lift him in one leap. Like a flash the blue barrel of
his rifle gleamed level and he shot once – twice.”36 The cowboy’s actions are
instinctive, and not restrained by fear.
In essence, the image of the cowboy is built on a kind of idealized
masculinity. These men are intensely physical, and constantly use their bodies in
skillful ways. Their moral actions also have a kind of purity to them, and are not
diluted by religion, urban manners or the demands of commerce. Even the actions of
the villains are uncomplicated and lack the layers of deception and concealed
motivations of urban life. Men are strong, and they are unambiguously good or evil.
Western literature also held appeal for women readers. Women had the same anti-modern concerns with city life as men, and they were also engaged with romantic understandings of the power of the western landscape. In addition, they were not immune to the power of a well-told adventure story. Men and women read many western bestsellers with equal enthusiasm. Western literature also contained female characters that contributed to the creation of a western myth. It offered tough and independent women who subverted eastern understandings, just as the
35 Zane Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage, (Rockville, Maryland: Phoenix Rider, 2008), 29. 36 Grey, Purple Sage, 33. 42 male characters did. Admittedly, far more male characters populated the pages of western novels, but significant female characters existed. Though many of the pulp fiction novels offered damsels in distress whose only purpose was to be saved by the cowboy protagonist, western literature also often portrayed women who were independent and moved through the landscape with agency and purpose, rather than as adjuncts to the men around them. In the opening passages of Alcatraz by
Max Brand, for example, protagonist Marianne Jordan is riding over to a neighbouring ranch to attempt to buy a stallion. It is Jordan herself who runs her ranch and makes the business decisions about which horses to buy and breed. At the same time, her independence seems inextricably linked with the landscape around her:
The west wind came over the Eagles, gathered purity from the evergreen slopes of the mountains, blew across the foothills and league-wide fields, and came at last to the stallion with a touch of coolness and enchanting scents of far-off things… Marianne had known thoroughbreds since she was a child and after coming West she had become acquainted with mere ‘hoss-flesh’ but today for the first time that the horse is not meant by nature to be the servant of man but that its speed is meant to ensure its sacred freedom.37
Brand’s descriptions of Marianne and the stallion all center around the implicit freedom and independence of the West. The stallion is owned and caged by a
Mexican whose outward and inward characteristics mark him as an outsider who does not understand or belong in the West. He is impervious to the effects of the landscape, and therefore denies the stallion his proper freedom.
37 Max Brand, Alcatraz, (New York: Putnam, 1923), 3-4. 43
In Riders of the Purple Sage another female ranch owner draws strength from the landscape around her. A Mormon woman facing down a group of Mormon elders, is about to capitulate when,
suddenly there came, in inward constriction, a hardening of gentle forces within her breast. Like a steel bar it was stiffening all that had been soft and weak within her… Once more her strained gaze sought the sage-slopes. Jane Withersteen loved that wild and purple wilderness. In times of sorrow it had been her strength, in happiness its beauty was her continual delight.38
This woman, who, against the wishes of the Mormon community, befriends those outside her faith, and runs her own ranch, the largest in the area, draws her strength and resolve from the environment around her. She too is a female character who exemplifies the independence that the West offers and fosters. She owns and runs her ranch, and at every turn defies the expectations for Mormon women that would control and limit her independence and interactions with those not of the Mormon faith. Grey suggests that this woman’s character is a product of her western upbringing and surroundings.
Both Marianne Jordan and Jane Withersteen are also competent in their independence. Neither woman relies on a man to guide and instruct her, and both are able to run their operations. Jane Withersteen’s “father had trained her in the management of a hundred employees and the working of gardens and fields; and to keep record of the movements of cattle and riders.”39 Later, when Jane Withersteen meets the cowboy Lassiter with equal reason to dislike the Mormon elders of her
38 Zane Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage, (Rockville, Maryland: Phoenix Rider, 2008), 8. 39 Grey, Purple Sage, 41-2. 44
town, she thinks of him as a “helper, a friend, a champion.”40 She does not gratefully
allow him to take over, but considers him an ally with useful skills that differ from
her own. Marianne Jordan returns home from school to find her father incapacitated
from illness and the foreman running the ranch inefficiently, and so she takes over
command despite the express wishes of the foreman.41
Though women certainly had help from the gallant cowboys of the West, they were also able to stand on their own against male villains. Jane Withersteen is pursued by the menacing Mormon Elder Tull who wants to make her one of his wives and take her lands, cattle and spring for himself and the benefit of his church.
She stands up to him directly, rather than wait for the assistance of a man. In addition, as the book goes on, she strengthens her resolve, coming to the conclusion that even though “her churchmen might take her cattle and horses, ranges and fields, her corrals and stables, the house of Withersteen and the water that nourished the village of the Cottonwoods; but they could not force her to marry Tull, they could not change her decision or break her spirit.”42
Not all women in western literature are as outside of the heteronormative gender roles of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Molly Stark Wood, the love interest of the protagonist of The Virginian, comes west because she finds the social codes of her eastern hometown too confining. Molly Stark Wood is born to an aristocratic American family that becomes destitute just as she becomes an adult.
She teaches music lessons and does fancy embroidery to support her family. When a
40 Grey, Purple Sage, 51. 41 Brand, Alcatraz, 13-14. 42 Grey, Purple Sage, 44. 45 rich young man asks her to marry him, she refuses because she does not love him.
Town opinion turns against her, finding it scandalous that she should prefer to work to support herself and suspecting her of snobbery. When her mother’s opinion turns against her, she accepts a position teaching school in Wyoming. She leaves Vermont
“heart-heavy, but with a spirit craving the unknown.”43 And though she conforms in many ways to a traditional kind of femininity, her dealings with men take place without the kind of social comment and stricture she experienced in the Vermont town she grew up in. As her romance with the Virginian develops, it does so between the two of them only, without the forced rituals and public scrutiny of the
East. Molly Stark is free to make her own choices and author her own fate. The other women in Wyoming are the wives of ranchers, and exhibit a high level of independence, if only because they frequently live in isolated areas and are expected to assist their husbands with whatever needs to be done.
Many of the female characters subvert gender roles but do not entirely transgress them. Despite Jane Withersteen’s personal fortitude and business acumen, there are still some areas where she assumes traditional gender roles.
When she offers Lassiter a fast horse, she tells him that the horse is “too spirited for a woman.”44 Even though she herself rides the fastest horse on the ranch, she conforms to ideas of masculine and feminine physical capabilities. The female characters in these books are also much more susceptible to love and affairs of the heart. When Marianne Jordan sets up a job interview, she feels the tension between
43 Wister, The Virginian, 68. 44 Grey, Purple Sage, 51. 46
her role as a rancher and as a woman: “Of course, she was merely an employer
receiving a prospective employee to examine his qualifications, but also remained,
in spite of herself, a girl receiving a man.”45 She tries to pretend to herself that the
meeting is strictly about business, and that she is excited because she is about to buy
some valuable horses, but she is unable to fool herself: “when her heart jumped as
she heard a swift, light step come down the hall and pause at her door, she admitted
at once that horses had nothing to do with the matter.”46 While the women in these
books may ride or judge horses just as well as a man, they are not immune to the
charms of a handsome man, or unaware of the masculinity of the cowboys and
ranchers around them.
Many western novels contained romance between men and women. The
western landscape is an ideal setting for romantic literature. The cowboy’s innate
virility makes him the ideal romantic hero. Just as men viewed the cowboy as an
aspirational figure, women were able to view him as an ideal romantic partner. In
these novels, the male love interests are invariably handsome. Wister speaks of how
the Virginian’s “tiger limberness and his beauty were rich with unabated youth.”47
In addition, cowboys acted with a kind of gallantry towards women, and offered them a very different attitude and experience than the men of the eastern cities.
Western men were depicted as belonging to another age in the way they treated women. They were chivalrous, rather than genteel, and willing to go to great lengths to court and woo the women of their affections. The romance between the Virginian
45 Brand, Alcatraz, 61. 46 Brand, Alcatraz, 62. 47 Wister, Virginan, 50. 47 and Molly Wood is a central part of the plot of The Virginian. Their courtship is lengthy, and he slowly wins her over, despite her initial reservations. These reservations are all based around his social status. From the very beginning, she cannot deny how handsome the Virginian is, noted especially when he comes to court her for the first time: “No one of her admirers had ever been like this creature.
The fringed leathern chaparreros, the cartridge belt, the flannel shirt, the knotted scarf at the neck… worn by this man now standing by her door, they seemed to radiate romance.”48 For Molly, the cowboy is both romantic and exotic.
The Virginian’s courtship style is also new to Molly. He does not approach her with stilted formality and courting rituals as the men of the East do, but is direct and forthright about his feelings and intentions. When he comes to invite her to go riding with him, and she berates him for a prank he played at a dance the night before, she tells him that she’s not sure she likes him. The Virginian responds by telling her, “That’s all square enough. You’re goin’ to love me before we get through.
I wish yu’d come a-ridin, ma’am.”49 The Virginian does not participate in the intricate social dance that men and women in civilized society must pass through in order to form an intimate connection. Instead, he simply shows up at her door, announces his intentions to woo and win her, and sets about trying to sweep her off her feet. Just as men were likely attracted to trying on the role of cowboy, women must have been attracted to spending time with these explicitly romantic figures.
48 Wister, The Virginian, 110-111. 49 Wister, The Virginian, 112. 48
In addition, the homosocial West of the cowboy was necessarily a West of few women. Women who envisioned themselves in the West could think of themselves as scarce, and rather than be forced to compete for the attentions of men, they could imagine men competing for their notice. Connor’s cowboy The Duke describes his life to a visiting female relative and tells her “how empty of love his life had been in this lonely land.”50 So while cowboys are the ultimate masculine figure, they are also portrayed as missing one thing: the love of a woman. As The Duke continues his story, he tells his relative about admiring the one young girl in the neighbourhood from afar. The Duke’s relation notes how changed he is when he speaks of her and that she “had never heard The Duke break through his proud reserve before.”51 Women, then, have a different role to play in these communities by virtue of their scarceness. They become more romantic themselves, simply by existing. Though women may not have been looking for actual romance, it is easy to understand the appeal of vacationing in a romantic landscape, populated with romantic figures and the chance to be a romantic figure yourself.
Western literature was also written for and about adolescents. Dime novels appealed to the need for adventure and fast-paced stories, but books were also written in which children were the protagonists. The Mystery Horse written by
Louise Riley and first published in 1950 is emblematic of this kind of literature. Set in the foothills west of High River, Alberta, the youthful protagonists are a ranching brother and sister, and two young dudes visiting a neighboring guest ranch. The plot
50 Connor, Sky Pilot, 234. 51 Connor, Sky Pilot, 235. 49
follows their efforts to foil the kidnapping of an expensive thoroughbred. Though
the youngsters have help from ranch hands and occasionally the Mounties, their
efforts are almost entirely independent and self-directed. Compared to the lives of urban children, these characters seem to have an almost unlimited mobility and freedom. Even the dudes are given the opportunity to experience this independence.
Even though they are only in the West temporarily, they feel the same kind of freedoms and mobility as the children that live there.
A great deal of this independence springs from the characters’ access to horses, and their unrestricted access to the foothills landscape. The book centers around the relationships the children have with their horses. Bob, the oldest character at sixteen, is the one to find the mystery thoroughbred. He takes her home and spends days carefully training her and developing a deep bond. The children at the guest ranch also have the chance to spend time with horses. While riding a real cow-pony, one of the dude children says, “‘Now I know what it means to turn on a dime. But this is the most exciting thing I’ve ever done.’”52
Riley also portrays the dude ranch children’s experiences as authentic, rather
than false, or lesser than the other children’s experiences. Riley describes a day trip
taken by guests and actual ranchers:
They spent the day scrambling up and down the rocky slopes, and bathing in the icy water and eating the sumptuous food which Mrs. Spaulding had provided. They stayed until it was dark. Then they sang cowboy songs around the camp-fire. When it was time to go back to the ranch, they rode swiftly in the dark, still singing, and trusting to their sure-footed horses.53
52 Louse Riley, The Mystery Horse, (Toronto: The Copp Clark Co. Limited, 1950), 135. 53 Riley, Mystery Horse, 92-93. 50
When one of the ranch children disappears, the dude children offer to help with the
search, and head off on a multi-day pack trip with only a ranch hand to provide
minimal supervision, where they are soon apprehended by the horse thieves. More
tamely, the brothers also assist on a real ranch round up. Despite their short stay in
Alberta, the dude children do not lack for adventure, time in the wilderness or
exposure to real cowboys and horses. For young boys then, guest ranches as
portrayed in literature explicitly offered the chance to live out the cowboy
adventures they had read about or seen on television.
Not all of the youths are male and, as in other westerns, many of the female characters in this book are competent and independent. Mrs. Davis, mother of Bob,
Elizabeth and Timmy, owns the ER ranch. Elizabeth does everything her older brother can do, dresses like him, and is not portrayed as an anomaly. Girls who were just as enamored as boys with cowboys and the West saw that they could have the same kinds of experiences there. Guest ranches eased the strictures of gender roles of the East for them too. It is only when the two dude boys join their party that her gender becomes evident. Upon hearing that the two boys from New York will be riding out with them, “Elizabeth’s heart sank. It had been such fun with just Bob and
Slim. Now everything would be different. They would just treat her like a girl.”54
Part of her worry is that her brother will want to spend more time with other boys,
but her concerns also stem from the fact that the dude ranch boys will expect her to conform to the gender roles that they are more familiar with, and, indeed, Elizabeth
is responsible for cooking for the party, even though she is the youngest. Elizabeth’s
54 Riley, Mystery Horse, 96. 51 experiences illustrate some of the ways gender roles differed from west to east. For young girls, therefore, just as for older women, guest ranches offered a way to experience an alternative to their usual roles and interactions.
Western literature took many forms, and taken together, it built an imagined, idealized and cohesive understanding of the West. Nature travelogues and romantic descriptions of the landscape described the West as place of extraordinary beauty ad majesty, untainted by so-called progress. This writing called to urbanites that felt hemmed in by the close quarters of city living, and provided backdrop for the adventures of westerners. Dime novels and romantic literature solidified the image of the cowboy: a man unconstrained by convention or place. With his impressive physical strength, consummate skill and ability to act independently, the cowboy came to be understood as a quintessentially masculine figure. His ability to go where he wanted and enact his superior code of morality and ethics made him appealing to those concerned about the enervating effects of modernity. Best of all, this lifestyle was accessible to tenderfoot easterners. Dude ranches offered opportunities for men to take on a cowboy avatar for a brief time. At the same time, western stories, and the presence of cowgirls called to women. They were able to enjoy the same physical adventures as men, and also perhaps enjoy the romantic attentions of the virile westerner. And children, enthralled by the exploits of cowboys and their close relationships with their horses, were able to share in these adventures and find a degree of independence that would have seemed impossible in an urban setting.
This nuanced image of the cowboy was solidified in the popular culture. Further chapters will explore how dude ranchers used these images to communicate with 52 guests about the guest ranch experience, and how they engaged with these images in their own lives. 53
CHAPTER THREE: COWBOY AND RANCHING IMAGERY IN THE DUDE RANCHER MAGAZINE
Western guest ranches depended on people from outside the region for their business. Most prospective dudes had never visited ranching country, but still had some idea of what they might find there. Drawing on themes and images promulgated by literature and popular entertainment, ranchers sold a specific vision of the West to potential consumers. Because of their familiarity with the West through literature and entertainment, many people had a constructed notion of what the West was like, as well as what they wanted to do on their dude ranch vacation. The guest ranchers, then, did not disseminate new understandings or images to their potential guests, but instead solidified a shared mythology by providing concrete ideas to flesh out what their guests already pictured. These cultural images were not simply used in outward communications, however. Guest ranchers also wrote for and to one another, and it is clear that on some levels, they understood that they were dealing in images and imagined mythologies. There is also evidence, however, that on some levels, they engaged with and took on many of the mythologized geographical and cultural attributes. This chapter will explore in detail the kinds of imagery and understandings that dude ranchers used when they wrote for prospective and former clients, as well as for themselves.
By 1926, guest ranches in the states of Montana and Wyoming had multiplied
to the point that many of them thought that a professional association would be a
good idea. Facilitated in part by officials from the Northern Pacific Railroad, dude 54
ranchers gathered in late September, 1926 in Bozeman, Montana, to discuss issues
facing the industry as a whole.1 This first meeting gathered ranchers who had been
operating independently of one another in order to create some standardization
within the industry. By joining a cooperative institution, ranchers could jointly
advertise, share tips and techniques, and negotiate as a group with the national
parks and transportation industries.2 Thus was the Dude Ranchers’ Association
(DRA) formed. Originally, most DRA ranches were located in the Rockies of Montana
and Wyoming. These two states always had the most members, but membership
eventually expanded to include ranches in Idaho, Washington, Colorado, the
Dakotas, Arizona and British Columbia. The DRA instituted an annual meeting for
members, which was as much concerned with socializing as it was with business.
Originally, the DRA published a yearly minute book for members so that they could
keep up with association business.3 By 1932, however, the DRA was producing a quarterly magazine called The Dude Rancher.
The Dude Rancher came into being as a convenient way to communicate with ranches spread out over northwestern North America. The magazine originally included letters from DRA executives, articles about news items and issues affecting dude ranchers and ranches, advertising and current lists of members. As time went on, however, the magazine began to grow in scope. Social pages were added that allowed people to keep up with colleagues in other states, and a women’s page was
1 Lawrence R. Borne, Dude Ranching: A Complete History, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983), 49. 2 Borne, Dude Ranching, 50. 3 Borne, Dude Ranching, 83. 55 added that included everything from discussions about problems with managing staff and recipes to wry essays about the difficulty of running a complex operation while maintaining a welcoming and relaxed face for guests. Dudes also began to read the magazine, so features extolling the West and guest ranches also appeared.
Ranchers wrote some of these laudatory stories, while satisfied guests wrote others.
This publication is an ideal source for examining the imagery that guest ranchers and their guests drew on when they thought about the West. Some of the articles, especially those found on the women’s page, were written exclusively for other ranchers with an ‘in the trenches’ kind of camaraderie, and others, like those found on the Fish and Game pages, contain things like minutiae of detailed herd counts that could only interest people professionally obligated to possess the knowledge.
But some of the articles read like a modern infomercial; they were meant to sell the myriad perceived benefits of a dude ranch vacation and encourage people to visit the West as soon as possible. Many of these seem to suggest that ranchers believed much of the imagery they were selling.
While the DRA was undeniably an American institution, and neither of the guest ranches we will examine in the next chapter belonged to the DRA, there is evidence that the dude ranching industry was a western endeavor, with a greater importance placed on proximity to an appropriately western setting, than with national borders. Though a 1934 edition of The Dude Rancher describes visiting a dude ranch as a “vacation that is typically American,”4 the author goes on to say that these vacations take place in the “glamour of a region which produced and still lives
4 “Ranch Vacations,” The Dude Rancher, January, 1934, 14. 56
most of the picturesque traditions of a new country where man and his horse are
sufficient unto themselves.”5 It is this region, where “miles of rolling prairies,
precipitous mountain trails or the quiet aisles of stately pine forests”6 can be found,
that is important to the experience of dude ranching. In the literature and
understanding of the time, this region did not stop at the forty-ninth parallel, and neither, therefore, did the ability to have a western vacation. In addition, in 1944 the
Chairman at Large of the Women’s Page of The Dude Ranger ranched in British
Columbia. She wrote as though her struggles and triumphs were very similar to those of her American counterparts, and referred to her many American guests.7 By
1947, resolutions made by the Dude Ranchers’ Association referred to members as
“representing dude ranches in nine states and Canada.”8 Guest ranching should be
understood as a regional, rather than national, experience.
Dude ranching was a regional activity because it could only exist in the
western parts of North America, specifically what is understood as ranching
country. Dude ranchers depended on the novelty and specificity of their landscape
to attract customers. Much of the language around the business drew on anti-
modern sentiments and presented western ranches as the direct opposite of an
urban space. Much of this difference was in the physical space. Guest ranches
fundamentally lacked the noise, bustle, pollution, and crowding inherent to urban
living. In October of 1933, the Sheridan Press wrote that “Business in this part of the
5 “Ranch Vacations,” 14. 6 “Ranch Vacations,” 14. 7 Pamela Staples, “Springtime in the Canadian Rockies,” The Dude Rancher, April 1944, 5. 8 “Resolutions,” The Dude Rancher, January, 1947, 13. 57
world is not inextricably mixed with gasoline exhaust, heavy palls of industrial
smoke, and the insistent racket of mechanical woodpeckers.”9 A Dude Rancher
article stated that “city-weary people” are “surfeited with fifty weeks of living
among steel and concrete.”10 In a poem entitled “The Voice of the Prairie,” published
in a 1940 edition, the opening lines stated what the prairie is not: “Away from the
noise of the busy street,/Away from the tramp of hurried feet,/Away from the cares
of the business life,/Away from the selfish, human strife.”11 Guest ranches, however,
were not just selling respite from the city; they sold rejuvenation. This rejuvenation
meant that guests would return to the city refreshed, but also stronger in character
and body than when they left. An article originally published in the Billings Gazette
argued that dude ranches are selling “mental and physical education, the recreation
of health and the readjustment of character.”12 Movie star Gary Cooper, a former
guest ranch owner and operator, wrote in 1937 that dude ranches provide “a
refreshing contact with something real.”13 Owners and guests alike operated under
the understanding that urban living fundamentally lacked something, something
that could only be attained in a wilderness setting.
This wilderness setting was also a particularly western setting. The Dude
Ranchers’ Association felt very strongly that guest ranches must be situated in the
West, and on multiple occasions published censorious articles about establishments
9 Sheridan Press, “It’s a Great Country,” The Dude Rancher, October, 1933, 12. 10 “The Wild East,” The Dude Rancher, January, 1934, 16. 11 “The Voice of the Prairie,” The Dude Rancher, October, 1940, 31. 12 Billings Gazette, “Dude Ranches are Important,” The Dude Rancher, October, 1933, 13. 13 Gary Cooper, “To the Dude Rancher,” The Dude Rancher, January, 1937, 12. 58
in the East and Midwest that called themselves dude ranches. One editorial ranted
against the false operations in the East that were merely “a roadside resort in some
eastern area, where perhaps they have a heartbroken pony or two, maybe a small
stream and perhaps some hills and trees.”14 The author worriedly asked what would happen if two small boys were to visit this pathetic place as children. When they become grown men and read our ads:
will they think of our beautiful wilderness and forest areas? Snow-capped peaks? Rushing mountain streams? Silent blue lakes? Moonlight rides? Campfire gatherings? The sting of the early morning air? A spirited mountain horse? A congenial “wrangler” filled with the lore of the west? The down-to- earth friendliness of the dude ranch operator? The fine milk from the ranch dairy herds? The fresh crisp vegetables from the ranch garden? The lowing cattle? The new calf? - or are they going to think of those few boyhood days at the roadside resort - which was sold to them as a dude ranch in their impressionable youth?15
Though moonlight rides and fresh garden vegetables could be found just as easily in
the East, the rides and carrots would be eastern and, according to the logic of the
writer, therefore inauthentic. The wilderness experience was integral to the dude
ranching experience, and had to happen in a particularly western environment. In
the same vein, two characters in the 1918 novel Four Dude Hunters discuss
wilderness vacations in Wyoming, Minnesota and Michigan. Though both have their
merits, and vacationers can enjoy similar activities in both states, the Wyoming
wilderness is judged to be more authentic than its eastern counterparts simply
because it is farther removed from urban areas in the East.16
14 Howard Sharp, “What Is a Dude Ranch?” The Dude Rancher, October, 1951, 14. 15 Sharp, “What Is a Dude Ranch?” 14. 16 Percy Coleman Field, Four Dude Hunters, (S.I: s.n., 1918), 4. 59
Such writings were predicated on a belief that western wildernesses affect
the men, women and children who visit them. Indeed, the impact is so powerful that
the people who lived near them in a western urban setting, were not impervious.17
Unlike easterners who can only hope to visit, westerners receive all the benefits of
the purer wilderness setting on a full-time basis, which accounts for the difference in character between easterners and westerners. One writer told prospective guests that when they arrive in the West they will find “the genuineness of the Westerner’s
hospitality, his straight thinking on human values, his scorn of artificiality and
money conceit.”18 The people of the West are genuine, the writer implied. They might not have the most refined manners, but their characters are solid, shaped by their environs. Dude ranchers seem to have engaged with this myth when selling the
West to prospective guests, but also when speaking to one another. In a tongue-in-
cheek statement, one writer said “we are good people-but not goody goody.”19 One
woman dude rancher mentioned how she and her colleagues do more than hoteliers
in the East by creating a home atmosphere for their guests, along with entertaining
them, feeding them and facilitating new friendships. And they do all this “without
the usual conveniences furnished … in cities, towns and suburbs that now seem
17 See, for example, Sheridan Press, “It’s a Great Country,” The Dude Rancher, October, 1933, 12, which states that though Sheridan, Wyoming is home to business and industry, it is conducted in an entirely different way than in the East. Articles that extolled western towns often emphasized the differences between western and eastern manners and character. 18 “Spend Your Western Vacation on a Dude Ranch,” The Dude Rancher, January, 1949, 43. 19 L. L. McBride, “Tooting Our Big Horns,” The Dude Rancher, October, 1933, 6. 60 necessary parts of modern living.”20 Consequently the earliest dudes came out expecting to rough it in the West, but modern dudes expected more and more. The writer was implying that the ranchers themselves only modernize because the easterners were unable to live without their modern luxuries. In a 1946 letter, a
DRA executive bluntly told readers that “The trouble we have is not caused by the true westerners; it is by those who have come in.”21 For the ranchers then, the western environment was central to their business, and also gave them a personal edge over their eastern guests.
These assertions about the superiority of westerners also occurred in more subtle terms. A short story about a horse named Carbine, published in The Dude
Rancher, outlined some of the differences between easterners and westerners. The horse, Carbine, began his life idyllically, nurtured and trained on a western ranch.
When he was sold to a dude ranch, things began to go wrong for Car. He was brought out for a morning ride with some dudes and mounted by “the fattest of the group, a girl.”22 This eastern woman is soft, indecisive and scared. Carbine is unable to tolerate her inexperience and incompetence when she asks him to speed up from a walk to a trot:
Car willingly quickened his pace, when suddenly he felt the most terrific bump on his back, followed by many more. The girl was bouncing. This was all Car could stand. He had borne the long wait while his stirrups were fixed, he had allowed himself to be turned like a mule, he had patiently walked along very slowly, and he had even put up with a long rein and a short one, but now, with these terrific bumps pounding away on his back in rapid succession - this was too much. His back humped, his ears lay back, his head
20 Mrs. Ralph Allan, “Shoes, Ships and Sealing Wax: A Discussion of the Dude Ranchers’ Convention,” The Dude Rancher, October, 1933, 8. 21 Walter C. Nye, “What About 1947?” The Dude Rancher, October, 1946, 13, 22 Joyce Boyer, “CARBINE, the Cowboy’s Horse,” The Dude Rancher, July, 1940, 8. 61
lowered, and he exploded without any more ado. The dude lasted two jumps, and then lay in a graceless heap on the ground.23
The story ends with Car returning to his original ranch, to be ridden by real cowboys. The writer of our story expects all our sympathy to lie with Carbine the horse. No pity is spared for the poor eastern woman, new to the West and riding, bucked off painfully and ignominiously. Car is a western horse, meant to be paired with a strong, competent, skillful westerner.
Guest ranchers had a vested interest in presenting themselves as physically superior and more knowledgeable than their guests, beyond the boost to the ego.
This environment and scenery may have been taken as a given by prospective dudes, but ranchers understood the importance of preserving and maintaining non- urban spaces, and in maintaining their role as gatekeepers or mediators to the wilderness experience. Many dudes, like the friends in The Four Dude Hunters, came west to see a real wilderness. As a woman dude rancher pointed out, you could ride a horse and see cattle in the East, but there was something indefinable about the western landscape.24 The ranchers, therefore, were dependent on the preservation of their wilderness. The American government also believed in the specialness of
western wilderness, and worked to achieve a way to preserve it while allowing
public access to it. In a 1934 edition of The Dude Rancher, Park Superintendent Guy
D. Edwards wrote about Grand Teton National Park, and the aims of the national
park system. He stated that “Truly, the work of the National Park Service is hand in
23 Boyer, “Carbine,” 8. 24 Mrs. Harry Hart, “Entertainment Problem on Dude Ranches,” The Dude Rancher, April, 1935, 10. 62 hand with that of the Dude Ranchers’ Association – to keep as much of the old west as possible in its original state so that commercialization will not despoil all of the natural beauty of the west – the real west, where people ride, hike, climb mountains, fish, and enjoy life in a natural setting of rare beauty.”25 He also referred to the park as “original America,” as he outlined the important reasons for preserving it as a wilderness area.26 In the same issue, the president of the Dude Ranchers’
Association wrote of members’ “apprehension” of additional roads being built into the “primitive areas.”27 While North America modernized and urbanized, guest ranches were explicitly selling an experience and ambience of a prior time. They depended, therefore, on the ability to preserve some of the pieces of that time.
Fortunately for them, parks systems and the states they operated in colluded.
For ranchers and the parks system, the landscape of the West held a purity that the urban environments of the East lacked. Because of this purity, the ranchers and parks staff agreed that certain kinds of park use were better than others. In
1935, Assistant Regional Forester, John W. Spencer, spoke to the annual dude ranchers’ convention and referenced the “common objective” with the parks: “the preservation of at least a reasonable part of God’s original west against the cheapening touch of civilization and its so-called developments.”28 After railing
25 Guy D. Edwards, “Convention Paper by Guy D. Edwards, Supt. Teton National Park,” The Dude Rancher, November, 1934, 12. 26 Edwards, “Convention Paper,” 12. 27 Frank Horton, Chas. C Moore, F. I. Johnson, “Resolutions Adopted At the Dude Rancher’s Convention, Cody, Wyoming, November 1, 2, 3, 1934,” The Dude Rancher, November 1934, 14. 28 John W. Spencer, “Primitive Areas and Dude Ranching,” The Dude Rancher, November 1935, 6. 63
against roads, automobiles, summer homes, and road side restaurants, Spencer concluded his address by telling the ranchers that “we are earnestly trying to keep these forest properties intact for the best and highest forms of public permanent use.”29 Spencer and the dude ranchers assigned a hierarchy of use to these public
areas, doing their best to keep them as wild as possible so that visitors could
experience wilderness through the mediation of a horse or hunting trip, rather than
the automobile, something which undermined the natural experience. A trip on
horseback was inherently restrictive. For an urban person, access to a horse,
knowledge of how to ride and care for it, and an understanding of how to survive in
the wilderness were a high bar to clear. Dude ranchers, therefore, were able to
position themselves as privileged gatekeepers of the western wildernesses.
With themselves in place as the mediators through which the West could be
experienced, guest ranchers could capitalize on pre-existing images that held latent
appeal to their prospective guests. For prospective visitors, the West was a romantic
place, a healthful place, and a place alluring for its non-urban qualities. In the
writing and photos of The Dude Rancher, many explicit references were made to the
romantic nature of the western landscape and inhabitants. Books like Wister’s The
Virginian and Connor’s The Sky Pilot and a host of dime and romantic novels had
already established the credibility of the western landscape. Many prospective
guests had already formed notions of handsome cowboys riding beautiful horses
under the open skies. For the ranchers, then, it was an easy step to encourage their
prospective guests to envision themselves in that landscape. A caption under a
29 Spencer, “Primitive Areas,” 6. 64
photo of a young boy mounted on a horse under the watchful eye of a cowboy
dressed in the full kit of hat, chaps, boots and fringed leather jacket, reads “you go
western as soon as you arrive on a dude ranch and have been given a horse and
outfit to call your own as long as you stay. The same adventurous spirit which led
the pioneer a century ago to seek the undiscovered draws Youth to the romantic
West.”30 In a 1947 ad for a rodeo in Sheridan, Wyoming, the copy tells readers that the rodeo is “a truly western event in a community which still clings to the romantic traditions which built the west.”31 Many fulsome descriptions of the scenery usually accompanied any dude ranching advertisement. A 1937 issue of The Dude Rancher describes the road leading to one ranch as “highly scenic, winding through stately
forests, along crystal clear mountain streams, and affording splendid and distant
views of the Teton Range and Jackson Hole.”32 Another ranch has “good horses
[that] afford the thrill of riding out through the land of purple sage. A land so enticing, so interesting in its bigness.”33 Yet another description is less specific, yet
still lavish: “[the ranch] lies in the midst of the country and traditions which made
the old west a land of glamour and romance, and of the scenic beauty which attracts
the modern traveler.”34 These descriptions read like those found in novels written
about the region.
30 Photo credited to Belden, caption author unknown, The Dude Rancher, January, 1934, 11. 31 “Sheridan Wyoming Bots Sots Stampede,” The Dude Rancher, April, 1947, 18. 32 Description of the Jenny Lake Ranch, The Dude Rancher, October, 1937, 17. 33 Description of the C L Bar Ranch, The Dude Rancher, October, 1937, 17. 34 Description of the Klondike Ranch, The Dude Rancher, January, 1938, 17. 65
In addition to the scenic beauty of the West, dudes also came for health
benefits it provided. An article in a 1937 edition of The Dude Rancher tells the story of an eastern photographer who was almost killed by “pernicious anemia” brought on by urban living. He decided to head west and photograph guest ranches. Only his time in the West was able to heal his physical ailments, and “the summers he spends under Montana and Wyoming skies enable him to safely undergo the rigors of the
Minnesota winters… Consequently he as well as his pictures is a real advertisement for the benefit of ranch vacations.”35 Children, of course, benefited from time on a
ranch, out of urban spaces: “underweight ones gain pounds and colour, overweight
ones lose with exercise.”36 During the Second World War, the ranches were
relatively untouched by many of the issues facing those in more urbanized parts of
the country. Ranches were able to provide “fresh vegetables, a reasonable amount of
meat, a minimum of war talk, fine weather, plenty of riding, fishing and loafing in the
sun”37 to stressed and tired civilians and furloughed men. In some cases, specific
natural features were beneficial, including springs: “This plunge is famous
throughout the section for its medicinal properties. Its beneficial qualities were
recognized by the Indians long before the advent of the white man… [The water] can
be used internally and externally with amazing beneficial results.”38 Beyond these
specifics, ranches always provided the incalculable benefits of fresh air, exercise and
35 “Ranch Ambassador-at-Large,” The Dude Rancher, July, 1937, 23. 36 Amy Lillian McNutt, “Dudes and Don’ts,” The Dude Rancher, April, 1942, 29. 37 I.H. Larom, “President’s Page,” The Dude Rancher, October, 1943, 4. 38 Excerpt from an advertising pamphlet of the Bar TA Ranch, The Dude Rancher, July, 1939, 15. 66
wholesome food to their guests. Just spending time out of an urban environment
was beneficial in a host of ways.
Another selling point for urban guests was that the environment was
explicitly not urban. People were searching for a rustic setting that would allow
them to recover from the demands of an urban society. The foreword of the Dude
Ranches of Western Canada pamphlet produced by the Canadian Government Travel
Bureau promised tourists “magnificent scenery” and “riding and hiking galore, as
well as swimming, boating, hunting, fishing and the more leisurely ranch pursuits.”39
When advertising, however, ranchers found themselves needing to find a balance
between offering an authentic rustic experience, while also making certain modern
conveniences available. While guests wanted to return to an older era, and
experience the cowboy lifestyle they were not eager to entirely give up all of the
comforts of urban living. Reassuringly, however, “Despite their seclusion, most
ranches have 24-hour electricity and complete modern conveniences”40 the Dude
Ranches of Western Canada pamphlet told readers. A poster for the Stampede Ranch
promised guests the opportunity to stay in log cabins or “Indian Teepees,” but also
electric lights and “Shower-Baths.”41 An article in a 1933 edition of The Dude
Rancher characterized a guest ranch as a place “where an eastern person, without
sacrificing any of the comforts and conveniences of home life, spend their vacations
39 Canadian Government Travel Bureau, Dude Ranches of Western Canada, GA M6340-198. 40 Dude Ranches of Western Canada, GA M6340-198. 41 Poster for the Stampede Ranch, in Paul Voisey, High River and the Times, (Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press, 2004), 133. 67
living the life of a westerner.”42 This same edition also extolled the modern virtues
of the city of Billings, Montana. The article asserted that Billings had “three theatres,
four golf courses, beautiful drives, historical points, nearby mountains and many
other recreational features.”43 In addition, the article reassured the reader that
“modern stores and shops offering a wide range of up-to-date merchandise give the
opportunity of making purchases usually possible in cities of much greater size.”44
The West, therefore, was a place different enough from the East to fulfill the
wilderness requirement, but not so unfamiliar as to be entirely unpleasant.
Guest ranchers seem to have provided these luxuries at the behest of their
guests, and not always willingly. In his address to the 1934 Dude Ranchers’
Association conference, President I. H. Larom gloomily concluded that “I think that
eventually we are all going to have to come to the swimming pool which, together
with the private bath, has been more or less of a problem for a good many of us,
involving considerable expense.”45 At the 1935 conference, Larom addressed the
issue again, saying that guests want “rustic beds, box springs, expensive mattresses,
electric light plants, concrete swimming pools, private bath and living rooms, fancy
cabins and hot blooded horses.”46 For ranchers, then, there was a strong push to maintain outward images of rusticity, but to also to discreetly provide comfortable
42 Mark Conroy, “Man’s Best Pal, a Good Horse,” The Dude Rancher, June, 1933, 9. 43 “Billings: Montana’s City of Progress,” The Dude Rancher, October, 1933, 17. 44 “Billings,” 17. 45 I. H. Larom, “Address of I. H. Larom President Dude Ranchers’ Association, at Opening of Annual Convention, Cody, Wyoming, November 1, 1934,” The Dude Rancher, November, 1934, 16. 46 I. H. Larom, “Survey of the Year,” The Dude Rancher, November, 1935, 4. 68
amenities. These comforts the ranchers reluctantly provided while balking at the
cost.
One non-negotiable amenity on a dude ranch was the opportunity to have a
horse of one’s own for one’s entire stay. Almost all guest ranch advertisements played on the appeal of horses, or at least took their presence as a given. Sometimes the writing suggests that children will be the most excited about equestrian opportunities, but there is an assumption that everyone coming to a dude ranch will be excited to ride. An article in a 1933 edition of The Dude Rancher expounded on
the appeal of horses, stating that “regardless of geographical location, horseflesh
seems to act as a powerful bond, which brings man to the full understanding, that a
man’s best pal, is a good horse.”47 In a 1937 advertorial, the writer reassured his
reader that “on a dude ranch, life begins at the corral. The guest is provided with a
well-broken, sure-footed horse at the time of his arrival, and the horse remains his
own for the duration of his stay. If the visitor is not a horseman, he can very soon
become a capable one under the guidance of an expert horse wrangler.”48 Dudes
were also assured that even if they are not competent riders, they will be by the
time they leave the ranch. A photo caption in the inaugural issue of The Dude
Rancher assured guests of the primacy of riding and horses: “The saddle house, barn
and corrals … are usually the center of attraction, - upon arrival … you are assigned
an outfit consisting of saddle, bridle and blanket. Beginners are assisted in every
way possible until they become accustomed to the saddle and used to the riding
47 Conroy, “Man’s Best Pal,” 9. 48 “The Dude Ranch Country Offers the Lure and Romance Of the ‘Old West,’” The Dude Rancher, July, 1937, 26. 69 trail.”49 The caption of a photo titled “A Horse to Call Your Own,” stated: “The corral boss ropes and saddles a horse for you and has someone from the ranch ride with you, and show you how to sit a western saddle and handle your horse.”50 Another article tells readers that once they have their horse they can look forward to
“glorious rides over rugged mountain trails, down through sunny valleys and shaded forests or deep into mountain fastnesses on pack train trips.”51 Horseback riding, and the relationship between a man (or woman or child) and a horse seems to encapsulate several of the draws of the West: romance, for in the language of the west, horses are romantic in and of themselves, and unfettered access to a romantic landscape. Hiking was always offered, but seeing the country by horseback was undeniably superior. In addition, the cowboy would be unrecognizable without his horse, which both increases his inherent romance and allows him to move freely across the majestic western landscape.
Horseback riding, whether over the ranges or up mountain trails, was only part of the cowboy experience. If all one wanted to do was ride, there was plenty of opportunity for this in the East. Dudes were eager to play the part of the cowboy, and ranchers aimed to ensure their guests knew exactly what was needed to transform comfortably and quickly once they reached the West. A 1935 article about big game hunting provided an extremely detailed packing list for prospective guests.
The article is specific about the kind of footwear, variety of underwear and proper weave for suitable trousers. The list is practical, telling guests what kind of cloth will
49 “The Ranch Saddle House,” The Dude Rancher, December, 1932, 8. 50 “A Horse to Call Your Own,” The Dude Rancher, December, 1932, 18. 51 “The Dude Ranch Country Offers the Lure and Romance,” 26. 70
keep them warm even when it is wet, and suggesting medicines and “mild
laxatives,”52 but the main purpose of the article is to reassure men that they will fit
in when they arrive. They were being told how to be a man in the wilderness. In a
1936 edition of The Dude Rancher, an ad for Hirsch-Weis Outdoor Garments
reassured urbanites that its products “go a long way to making a Dude into a real
Westerner!”53 The imagery in The Dude Rancher balanced the essential otherness of the West with constant messages of accessibility. Articles and ads detailed exactly how an easterner could assume the cowboy avatar.
Western clothing was one significant way in which the West became immediately accessible. Almost all of the advertorials and articles assured readers that they could buy an approximation of western clothes in the East, but that there were many shops there that could outfit them expertly in the kind of gear that real westerners wear so that they would fit seamlessly into the western landscape.54 A
writer for Town and Country magazine wrote about her experiences touring dude
ranches while wearing a cowboy hat, boots and divided skirt. This was enough to
make her indistinguishable from real westerners: “several sight-seers, avid for a
glimpse of the real West, made audible comments about me as a picturesque
daughter of the ranges.”55 The proper clothing made the experiences of dudes more
authentic, just as the western environment did. Many of the earliest photos in The
52 “Big Game Hunting in Dude Ranch Country,” The Dude Rancher, September 1935, 4. 53 Hirsch-Weis advertisement, The Dude Rancher, April, 1936, 24. 54 Hirsch-Weis, 24. 55 Lora Hale, “My Impression of a Dude Ranch,” The Dude Rancher, October, 1937, 31. 71
Dude Rancher portray guests in a range of clothing, especially when riding. In these
photos there are just as many people wearing English style boots and breeches as
sporting denim and high-heeled cowboy boots. But as time goes on, the pictures
portrayed almost exclusively western clothing. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s,
Lee Jeans purchased the back cover ad of The Dude Rancher. The ads varied in
content, but they always featured a cowboy in Lee Jeans, a child in Lee Jeans, and
sometimes a rotund man and a cowgirl. No matter what the content of the ads, the
implication was always that by choosing the right ‘cowboy pants,’ one will more
successfully perform cowboy duties, whether it is riding a bucking bronco, rounding
up cattle, or romancing a lady.
Though the health benefits of the West and enjoyment of horseback riding were equally accessible to men, women and children, parts of the West were undeniably masculine. In the July, 1940 issue of The Dude Rancher, an article called
“The Code of the Sioux Indian” contained a purported translation “from the picture
writing,” and outlined what could be thought of as a code of masculinity set down by
Wabasha, “a great Indian chief, a medicine man and one of the great Indian
philosophers.”56 This article is rife with anti-modern sentiments, and almost every
point contradicts unstated but strongly suggested problems with modern urban
living and conceptions of civility. Some of the points are simply a celebration of the
male body: “If by a right living and clean life you have made your body beautiful and
sound, it is well to have your body seen by all, and to so set an example for others.
56 Captain E. W. Tranter, “The Code of the Sioux Indian,” The Dude Rancher, July, 1940, 10. 72
The veil of shame is well for those who are diseased and unclean.”57 This must have been a welcome statement for those fed up with binding or uncomfortable clothes. A similar point simply encouraged fitness and physicality: “In the day of his strength, no man is fat. Fat is only in a beast. In man it is a disease.”58 Physical fitness was
necessary so that men were able to spring to physical action, and even to violence if
necessary: “If a wild beast attack your house, your wife, your child or your friend, it
is your duty as a man to seize whatever weapon you may find at hand to destroy it
or drive it off. And, it is none the less your duty to do this if that beast be in the form
of a man.”59 The message here was that the male head of the family was not bound
by law or society to legally acceptable behavior; instead he should take immediate
action to protect those dependent upon him.
One article emphasized personal responsibility and the empowerment of the
individual man: “If a man make a promise to another, this is a bond which cannot be
broken except only by the party with which he made it … show respect to all men,
but grovel to none.”60 Just as a real man is not fat, he is also in control of his
temptations: “If a man be given over to sex appetite, he is harboring a rattlesnake
whose sting is rottenness and then death,” and “when at labor eat three times each
sun. In times of rest eat sparingly.” For a society that perceived a growing weakness
and moral laxity among its young men, this western, more natural code of conduct
would have been attractive. For a young man who felt he had to grovel to his boss,
57 Tranter, “The Code of the Sioux Indian,” 10. 58 Tranter, “The Code of the Sioux Indian,” 10. 59 Tranter, “The Code of the Sioux Indian,” 10. 60 Tranter, “The Code of the Sioux Indian,” 10. 73 or who felt himself becoming flabby, this served as a warning and a germane suggestion.
While dude ranches offered a solution to men who were worried about the state of their masculinity, they also warned that some men had already been claimed by city living and were too far gone for even the West to repair. On the cover of the October, 1937 edition of The Dude Rancher, we see a line drawing of a hunting camp. Two figures are returning from the hunt. The cowboys and dudes are indistinguishable, except for the older man that is already in the camp. He is a large man, with a big belly that hangs over the apron he wears as he stands over the cook fire. The caption reads “TOO FAT TO HUNT.”61 Perhaps the cover is directed at the dude ranchers themselves, meant as a private joke for those who see many eastern tourists every summer who are hopelessly out of touch with the wilderness and their own masculinity. Or more likely the cover was meant to reassure eastern aspirational dudes that as long as they can fit into a saddle and proper cowboy clothing, they might still renew their masculinity. Most likely, both interpretations are fitting, and they both reinforce the idea that masculinity is something that can be lost.
The articles also suggested that if a man was simply out of touch with his masculinity, and not too far gone, it could be recovered. Guest ranches provided an opportunity to draw out masculinity that was being squelched by urban living. An article published in 1937 was an extremely detailed script of the first day of a hunting trip at a dude ranch, and chronicled the response of a man’s inner self to
61 Cover, The Dude Rancher, October, 1937. 74 stimuli he did not know was missing. It stated that when a man arrives in the West, even the scent of the air is enough to wake something inside him: “that indescribable sense of adventure inculcated in the make-up of every man will cause your blood to flow faster, cause you to square back your shoulders and with head erect breath deeply, inhaling the vigorous morning air.”62 Even falling asleep was an adventure: “The soft, pine laden, breeze gently sighing through the trees lulls you to sleep, and an undisturbed rest, for here, there are no noisy cares or street railways, no Black Marias careening and screeching through the streets, no blowing of whistles, no news boys yelling at the top of their voices to announce some headline in a vernacular that no one can understand.”63 Western air was to already have worked its magic by breakfast time. While city men might be satisfied with only “a roll and a cup of coffee,” men of the West eat “stewed prunes, cooked cereal, coffee with real cream, bacon, eggs, hot cakes, or toast and honey. You cannot understand how you are able to consume such quantities of food.”64 As the hunting party prepared to head out, our everyman would manage to expertly secure his gear and mount himself on his favorite horse. The party would wind its way up into the mountains, passing ever more beautiful and romantic scenery, all the while breathing in the “rare and pure” air.65 By the point it is time to fall asleep in a tent and sleeping bag that evening, all cares would have fallen away, and everyman would be content and surfeited, ready to go forth and shoot an elk. The incredible
62 Walter C. Nye, “When It’s Fall Time In the Mountains,” The Dude Rancher, October, 1937, 22. 63 Nye, “Fall Time In the Mountains,” 22. 64 Nye, “Fall Time In the Mountains,” 22. 65 Nye, “Fall Time In the Mountains,” 22. 75
detail of the article serves to reassure urban men that they will not be lost when
they arrive at the ranch, and to highlight exactly what their current life lacks. There
are no nagging wives (or women at all) in this particular narrative, no demanding
bosses or crying children. There are only competent, capable men reveling in a
particularly physical and sensual wilderness.
The appeal of the masculine cowboy to the urban man is easily seen, but
dude ranches also offered women the chance to break out of stultifying eastern
social strictures and gender roles. A series of article in a 1934 edition of The Dude
Rancher focused on western women. One chronicled the first women in the area, another discussed the political role of women in building the West, and the third provided a brief and laudatory biography of Calamity Jane. Calamity Jane could
“cuss, chew tobacco, drink, rope a horse, or fight Indians with the best of the men.”66
Her femininity, however, was not entirely subsumed. Despite her rough exterior, she
was caring and compassionate, willing to help anyone whether or not she knew
them: “she would stop at some isolated hut and spend weeks nursing a wounded
stranger back to health or risk her life to rescue a white man from the Indians.”67
One article chronicled the 1870 election of Esther Morris as Justice of the Peace.
Morris was the first woman in the US to be elected to that office, and she went on to
be extremely important in the women’s suffrage movement.68 For Eastern women,
all such stories suggested an atmosphere where they would be allowed to push the
66 “Calamity Jane,” The Dude Rancher, April, 1934, 10. 67 “Calamity Jane,” 10. 68 Elsa Spere Edwards, “Wyoming Women Played Important Roles in Early Politics,” The Dude Rancher, April, 1934, 10. 76
boundaries of what eastern social custom allowed. Hank the Wrangler described
one woman he taught to ride: “Said she and her sister raised in a big house, had
maids and everything. Never even rode a bike - played tennis or swam. Never saw a garden grow, never knew peas grew in a pod, never been west before, never saw a horse or cow close, ‘cept in the movies. Never done anything but grow up and raise two kids.”69 The rest of the article described teaching the woman to ride with a
sympathetic, but tongue-in-cheek tone. It is clear from this account that dude
ranches gave women the chance to experience recreational activities that were
usually gendered male.
Despite the fact that a heavy emphasis was placed on the masculine aspects
of the cowboy, all cowboy activities were offered equally to both sexes. Though
women who wrote into the magazine mentioned the pleasures of fishing, few spoke
of enjoying the sport of hunting. But all cowboy skills were up for grabs. In 1937
Prudence Lambuth detailed her experiences:
I learned to tie ropes properly, to saddle, unsaddle, rub down, feed, and water my own horse… I learned about rounding up cattle - the cross-country riding, sometimes as much as thirty miles a day in the search for a scattered herd across mountain meadows, over rimrock ridges, down into thicketed canyons, and up again into the cool sweetness of pine forests; and then the bawling, clamorous, thundering last stages in the mountain corrals when our objectives, the prime beef cattle, were segregated from the rest of the herd. And I learned to yell too, - the piercing wahoo of the range.70
Lambuth learned all this from a “buckaroo.” As long as she was willing to put in the
hard work to learn, the skills were hers for the taking. And once she had gained
69 Hank – the Wrangler, “Dudin’,” The Dude Rancher, January, 1953, 18. 70 Prudence Lambuth, “What I Learned on a Cattle Ranch,” The Dude Rancher, October, 1937, 26. 77
them, she gained equality: “When I could ride on round-up trips for three days at a stretch without collapsing, and yell my loudest at an ornery cow, then I graduated. I was no longer a dude, but a real buckaroo. This was the zenith.”71 Fleeting as this
sense of equality might have been, it was unqualified. Indeed, a recollection written
for The Dude Rancher by a retired wrangler stated that he preferred to have women
out on the pack trips because they were more willing to learn and therefore made
fewer mistakes and wrecked less gear.
Guest ranching also offered women an escape from the more mundane parts
of their daily lives. A Dude Rancher article published in 1935 suggested that a
holiday where a woman has to cook three meals a day for her family and mind the
children is no holiday at all. “If she enjoys flowers, let her tramp around the woods
and get acquainted with the wild geraniums, yarrow, holly-leaved barberry and a dozen others. She shall return to her home a better mother, benefitted by the contact with the wholesome things of nature.”72 Guest ranch advertisements also
emphasized that though there were lots of things to do, any guest could spend their
time simply enjoying the peace and quiet and break from the city.73 Men and women
benefited equally from exposure to romantic, wilderness environments.
Moreover, the romantic image of the cowboy was made to appeal to men and
women alike. The cowboy figure is romantic in the same way that the western
landscape is romantic. Individual cowboys, however, provided the opportunity for a
71 Lambuth, “What I Learned,” 26. 72 Mark Conroy, “The Stream-Lined Vacation,” The Dude Rancher, September, 1935, 9. 73 “What Will I Do on a Dude Ranch?” The Dude Rancher, October and November, 1938, 26. 78 different kind of romance for female guests. Throughout the decades a plethora of ads and photographs in The Dude Rancher featured a lovely young woman and a handsome cowboy. Sometimes she is sitting on a fence watching him work with a horse, sometimes she is on a horse while he patiently instructs her, and sometimes they are cresting a hill on horseback together. In every case, the woman is receiving the individual attentions of a handsome and masculine figure. Though none of the written advertising specifically states that there will be handsome cowboys for ladies to fall in love with, references to fraternization between dude wranglers and dudes made it clear that women were coming out with this in mind. In a 1945 list of don’ts for dudes, tip 10 was “Don’t fall in love with a cowboy.”74 The article rather fraudulently warned women that it is potentially embarrassing, bad business, and that at the end of the day, cowboys make very little money and are fairly uncouth in private. In 1942, a ranch wife wrote in an article that was reprinted from the
National Junior League Magazine, about the handsome cowboy that you will meet at the ranch: “you’ll like him - but some gals overdo it - poor guy has politely stiff- armed a dozen women a month because he’s so different and wears clanky spurs.”75
In 1946, a woman ranch manager wrote about how many of her cowboys came down with an “attack of skirt fever”76 during the high season. It is easy to understand the lure of the cowboy to eastern women. In popular literature, these men were the antithesis of their urban acquaintances, and women were just as steeped in the language of a crisis in masculinity as men were. Travelling west gave
74 B. Forkenbrock, “Don’ts for Dudes,” The Dude Rancher, October, 1945, 33. 75 Amy Lillian McNutt, “Dudes and Don’ts,” The Dude Rancher, April, 1942, 28. 76 Mary Shawver, “Women’s Page,” The Dude Rancher, October, 1946, 5. 79
urban women a chance to interact with men that possessed the masculine traits the
urban men they knew were missing.
Though much of the dude ranching advertising was directed to adults, guest ranches were thought to be ideal family vacation spaces too. Western and cowboy
images were just as appealing to children as they were to adults. Children knew all
about cowboys before they even arrived at the ranches. One article assured parents
that their children will adjust to the West before they do, “probably already down at
the corral. The TV cowboy heroes are forgotten; here’s the real thing. Young Johnny
and Mary are eager to get on with their adventure. First, there’s horseback riding, of
course. All family ranches have some horses that are so gentle that the kids can
safely ride them under the watchful eye of a friendly ranch wrangler.”77 Ranches
made sure that children were kept occupied throughout the day so that their
parents could relax and enjoy their own vacations.78 And as we have seen, the
wilderness environments of guest ranches were thought to be especially beneficial
for children. Dude ranches had plenty of fresh air and opportunities for exercise, as
well as the food naturally produced on the ranch that children needed. The caption
under a photo of a row of grinning children in western wear in a 1933 edition of The
Dude Rancher sums up this attitude: “CHILDREN ENJOY THE CARE-FREE LIFE OF
THE DUDE RANCH. Plenty Fresh Air, Fresh Milk, Fresh Vegetables from the Ranch
77 L. L. Perrin, “A Vacation Spot for the Whole Family,” The Dude Rancher, January, 1953, 12. 78 “A Dude Ranch is the Ideal Vacation for Families,” The Dude Rancher, January, 1953, 13. 80
Gardens – A Good Saddle Pony – Lots of Exercise. That’s What Puts the Old Pepper
In the Children on the Dude Ranches.”79 Ranches were essentially wholesome.
Just as dude ranching offered men the chance to reconnect with and regain
their masculinity, it offered young boys the chance to explore truly manly activities
for the first time. A pioneer born in the Midwest who brought his children up in the
far west wrote of the benefits his children had growing up: “It makes men out of
boys. My two boys could ride and rope cattle at twelve and thirteen years old and
associated with men until they had men’s ideas.”80 Young men in the city would never have had the chance to try these things, nor would they have had the chance to have been considered men. Statements like this would have appealed to both parents eager for their sons to grow up with proper masculine influences, and young boys already steeped in the romantic and independent imagery of cowboys and the West. In addition, dude ranchers recognized themselves in these statements, underscoring their belief in the superiority of their location and lifestyle.
Ranchers knew the importance of creating and maintaining this western and cowboy imagery. Throughout The Dude Rancher, they talked about the difficulty of maintaining an image while hosting guests. A satirical article discussed the ideal qualification of a guest rancher and his wife: ““He must be a ladies’ man, a man’s man, a prince of a good fellow well met, a Democrate [sic], a Republican, a new dealer, an old dealer, a fast dealer, an authority on women, the weather, wildlife, game, fish and fowl - an expert on horses, cows, cats, dogs, sheep, brunettes,
79 Photo of children, credited to Valley Ranch, The Dude Rancher, June, 1933, 12. 80 Dr. W. A. Allen, “Dear Editor,” The Dude Rancher, July & August, 1938, 16. 81
blondes, redheads, and wild flowers.”81 The rancher must be enough of a chameleon to blend in with his guests, but have enough charisma to keep everyone entertained.
He must also, of course, have the skills to run a ranch. His wife, on the other hand, must be the kindest, most pleasant woman guests have ever met, while also: “Riding, carefree, by day with all and sundry, she must somehow still be the perfect and fastidious housekeeper, making the beds, swabing [sic] the plumbing, emptying the ash trays, swatting the flies, scrubbing the woodwork, waxing the floors, shining the windows and oh ! what a cook!”82 In short, both must do an incredible amount of
work to keep a ranch functioning smoothly, while always appearing at their best for
their guests. Some articles lamented the difficulties of hiding frustration or irritation
from guests. In a humorous list of New Year’s Resolutions, a “Dude Rancher’s Wife”
promised she would “not grit my teeth too audibly when asked to pose for just one
more picture as we wind our way up a treacherous skyline trail.”83
Despite such complaints, dude ranchers were extremely successful in
creating and disseminating a western image to their guests – so successful in fact,
that some ranches found people willing to perform some of this work themselves. In
a 1944 article, Walter C. Nye, long time member of the DRA executive marveled at
the willingness of dudes to perform ranch work. The piece chronicles the
willingness of dudes to get up early and spend all day performing ranch work that is
hard physical labour. It argues that this type of work is refreshing to the body and
81 M. M. Goodsil, G. P. A. N. P. R. Co., “The Model Rancher and His Bride,” The Dude Rancher, January, 1946, 26. 82 Goodsil, G. P. A. N. P. R. Co., “The Model Rancher and His Bride,” 28. 83 “Personal New Year’s Resolutions of Dude Rancher’s Wife,” The Dude Rancher, January, 1940, 8. 82 relaxing to the mind, compared to the stresses of urban wartime life.84 On the other hand, The Dude Rancher contains many pieces that either discourage young people from applying for jobs, or complain about the quality of their help. In 1940, an editorial entitled “Dude Ranch Employment” grumbled “There seems to be a misunderstanding as to just what sort of work there is on a dude ranch. Well, one should get this straight - there is a lot of hard work to do.”85 The work is waitressing, gardening, and ranch chores. Skills like “playing tennis, riding horseback, playing a guitar will not qualify you for a dude ranch job.”86 This editorial did not stop the flood of unqualified job applicants who wanted to “help with the horses, with everything but something useful.”87 An editorial told hopeful applicants that their interest in horses and the outdoors did not qualify them for a job, and that most of the available work was hard, dirty and difficult, with long hours and that jobs like wrangling were only available to those with experience.88 Dude ranchers had managed to create an image that hid the essential reality from their paying guests, exposing them to only the best parts and convincing them that what they saw was the real West. It would appear that at times they paid a price for this in their own operations.
Dude ranchers dealt in imagery as much as in experience and, the western and wilderness experiences they provided to their customers were dependent on a
84 Walter C. Nye, “Work or Play? For the Most Part, It’s All the Same,” The Dude Rancher, October, 1944, 40. 85 “Dude Ranch Employment,” The Dude Rancher, April, 1940, 38. 86 “Dude Ranch Employment,” 38. 87 Mary Shawver, Women’s page letter, The Dude Rancher, January, 1947, 3. 88 “How Can I Get A Job On A Dude Ranch?” The Dude Rancher, April, 1947, 9. 83 shared mythology created through popular culture. This imagery allowed ranchers to sell something familiar and expected to their customers. They also balanced exclusiveness of experience and landscape with accessibility in their messaging.
This vision of the West rested on the landscape, which was understood as a romantic space, the antithesis of the urbanized East. Dudes could come to the West to ease bodies and spirits battered by city living, and find rejuvenation. Once they arrived, they would have the chance to dress like cowboys and gain cowboy skills in comfortable, welcoming surroundings. Men and women equally accessed these abilities. The use of a horse to move through the landscape enhanced their romantic experiences. While women had the chance to gain skills usually considered male, and the respect of westerners, men had the special draw of replenishing and reconnecting to their innate masculinity. The West was a special space for men that allowed them to be manly in ways impossible in the city, and celebrated a manly physicality. Children, familiar with cowboys from dime novels, radio and television, also had the opportunity to revel in a cowboy space that was also particularly healthful for them. As ranchers created this imagery, they acknowledged that some of it was explicitly created for their guests, while also identifying with many of the tropes and images they promulgated. The next chapter will identify the ways in which two dude ranchers took on cowboy attributes and attitudes in their own personal lives, while also using these images and narratives to attracts guests to their ranches. 84
CHAPTER FOUR: THE STAMPEDE RANCH AND THE BUFFALO HEAD RANCH
Guest ranching was an activity tied to the North American west, and was not
exclusively American or Canadian. Though most of North America’s guest ranches
were situated in the American west, the Canadian west also had a thriving dude
ranch industry. This chapter will examine two dude ranches in particular – the
Buffalo Head Ranch, owned and operated by George Pocaterra, which accepted
guests from 1924 to 1941, and the Stampede Ranch, owned and operated by Guy
Weadick and Florence Weadick (usually known as Flores or Florence LaDue1), which accepted guests from 1920 until approximately 1940. These two ranches were both situated in Eden Valley, Alberta, across the Highwood River from one another. Like their American counterparts, Pocaterra and Weadick made the most of their surroundings: G.M. Dawson, Surveyor-General of Canada, said Eden Valley was the most beautiful valley he had ever seen.2 Though neither of these ranches
belonged to the Dude Ranchers’ Association, their methods of operation, advertising
and engagement with western imagery were similar to those of their southern
counterparts. In particular, this chapter will focus on Weadick and Pocaterra. These
1 Flores, or Florence, LaDue was born Grace Maud Bensal, but changed her name at fifteen when she ran away from home to join a Wild West Show. Originally, she chose the name Flores, the Spanish word for flowers, but over the years was often called Florence. After marrying Guy Weadick, she went by the name Mrs. Guy Weadick socially, but professionally as Flores (or Florence) LaDue. For clarity, I have chosen to refer to the couple as the Weadicks, and individually as Weadick and LaDue. 2 R. M. Patterson, Far Pastures, (Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary: TouchWood Editions, 2005), 103. 85
men were both transplants to the western landscape, and both passionately loved
the western way of life and the cowboys of that world. Both men were also seasoned
publicists and promoters. This chapter will provide brief biographies of the two
men, discuss the formation of the two ranches and their transformation into dude
ranches, and examine the ways in which Weadick and Pocaterra combined their
promotional and cowboy skills. This chapter will also argue that these ranches, like
all dude ranches and their dudes were firmly engaged with western wilderness and cowboy imagery.
When examining the Buffalo Head and Stampede Ranches, it is important to
remember that Weadick and Pocaterra were romantic figures, both in their self-
awareness, and in the imaginations of their chroniclers. Both immersed themselves
in an idealized vision of the cowboy lifestyle, constructed from images found in
literature and popular culture first, and their own experiences in the West later.
They were captivated by the images and folklore of the cowboy at a young age and
never looked back. When recounting their past, they told tales of grandiose cowboy
exploits. Both men were married to women who were equally as skilled in
performance and promotion, and in Weadick’s case, just as immersed in cowboy and
western skills and performance. In addition, biographers and historians seem to see
them through the same romantic lens. Donna Livingstone’s study is named Cowboy
Spirit, an allusion to Weadick’s enduring legacy as a cowboy presence here in
Calgary, and she says that his “story is the story of the cowboy, and it is through 86 folks like him that the cowboy spirit endures and flourishes.”3 The prologue of The
Diva and the Rancher, a study of George Pocaterra and Norma Piper Pocaterra by
Jennifer Hamblin and David Finch, begins with the lines: “This is the story of two dreamers who never really fulfilled their dreams but enjoyed great personal success, nevertheless, and became local legends in their own lifetimes.”4 A biography of Florence LaDue by Wendy Bryden is subtitled “The true love story of
Florence and Guy Weadick and the beginning of the Calgary Stampede.” It opens with the lines: “Rodeo Promotor Guy Weadick and trick roper and cowgirl extraordinaire Flores LaDue Weadick lived and thrived in a world of whisky traders and wolfers, a rough and tumble place that we have all seen represented in the movies, though it must be said that no mere film could ever capture the essence of
Alberta at the end of the nineteenth century.”5 It is almost certain that Pocaterra and the Weadicks would be pleased to be eulogized in such terms, and it is true that the
Weadicks and Pocaterra did live uncommonly exciting lives. It is difficult, therefore, to separate the details of their lives from the romantic imagery that surrounds them.
Over the course of his life, Guy Weadick came to be known as an iconic cowboy figure, and was deeply invested in the creation and promulgation of western and cowboy imagery and entertainment, and southern Alberta boosterism.
Like many other early Albertans, however, Weadick’s origins lie in the east. Born in
3 Donna Livingstone, The Cowboy Spirit: Guy Weadick and the Calgary Stampede, (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 1996), 1. 4 Jennifer Hamblin and David Finch, The Diva and the Rancher: the Story of Norma Piper and George Pocaterra, (Calgary, Victoria & Vancouver: Rocky Mountain Books, 2006), 9. 5 Wendy Bryden, The First Stampede of Flores LaDue, (New York: Touchstone, a Division of Simon and Schuster, 2011), 11. 87
Rochester, New York, in 1885, he was drawn to the West and the romantic figure of
the cowboy as a child. His uncles told him stories about Wyoming and California,
and before he turned twenty, Weadick left home and headed for the West, where he found short-term work up and down the plains and foothills, from Mexico to
Canada.6 By the fall of 1904, Weadick had reached Alberta. There, he saw riding and
roping competitions and demonstrations that captured his imagination.7 In 1905, he
had travelled to Fort Worth, Texas, where he witnessed cowboy Bill Pickett perform
an incredible act: as he wrestled a steer to the ground, Pickett bit the animal’s lip in
an act of outrageous showmanship. Weadick and Pickett teamed up and took the
show on the road, Weadick acting as promoter, and Pickett repeating his unique
method of downing a steer.8 The two men travelled north to Alberta, where
Weadick was able to book them several shows. He was able to draw large audiences,
and Pickett’s never-before-seen trick was popular and well received.9 After his
successes with Pickett’s act, Weadick made western act promotion his career, and
moved on to larger shows.
Wild West Shows were a popular form of travelling entertainment during the
second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century,
and Weadick and Pickett were anxious to take the act to as many venues as possible
to capitalize on public fascination with all things western. Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild
6 Livingstone, Cowboy Spirit, 10-13. 7 Livingstone, Cowboy Spirit, 16. 8 Livingstone, Cowboy Spirit, 17-18. 9 Livingstone, Cowboy Spirit, 19. 88
West originated in 1883, and was one of the first and biggest Wild West shows.10 It dramatized western life and history, the acts included recreations of the pony express, a buffalo hunt, train and mail coach attacks and hold ups and famous battles like the Little Bighorn, interspersed with trick riding and roping. Buffalo Bill did not just recreate past events; he attempted to find the people that had actually participated the first time around.11 Though the show claimed to recreate recent events in an authentic way, Robert M. Seiler and Tamara P. Seiler have characterized it as “western pageant and spectacle,” and have argued that, like dime novels, Wild
West Shows helped cement the cowboy and West as romantic.12 Like dude ranches, albeit in a more passive way, Wild West Shows allowed the eastern public to engage with popular romantic western narratives and images. These shows inspired
Weadick to travel with Pickett, as well as his later western promotions.
Weadick and Pickett parted ways amiably, and Weadick travelled to
Winnipeg and North Dakota, looking for acts or shows to promote. In the fall of
1905, he was in Chicago, where he saw an impressive and well organized Wild West
Show. It was here that he first saw Flores, or Florence, LaDue, his future wife, perform her trick riding and trick and fancy roping act. LaDue was born Grace Maud
Bensel in Montevideo, Montana, in 1883. Like her husband, she too was fascinated with cowboys as a child. She learned to rope and ride as a child growing up on a
10 Robert M. Seiler and Tamara P. Seiler, “The Social Construction of the Canadian Cowboy: Calgary Exhibition and Stampede Posters, 1952-1972,” in Icon, Brand, Myth: The Calgary Stampede, ed. Max Foran, (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2008), 300. 11 Seiler & Seiler, “Canadian Cowboy,” 300. 12 Seiler & Seiler, “Canadian Cowboy,” 301. 89
Sioux Reservation in Montana.13 According to stories LaDue told later in life, she
saw her first Wild West Show when she was fifteen. Entranced with the
performances, she approached the manager after the show and begged to audition.
Impressed with her roping tricks, he agreed to allow her to join. When her father
refused permission to let her go, she ran away and changed her name.14 From then
until she met Weadick, she toured the West with various wild west shows, becoming
a performer and attraction in her own right. After seeing LaDue perform for the first
time, Weadick returned to Winnipeg to spend a season organizing and promoting a
wild west show at an amusement park, but he hurried to find LaDue as soon as the
season was finished. Five weeks after he caught up with the show in Iowa, the two
were married in the fall of 1906. LaDue was twenty-three and Weadick twenty-
one.15 After the wedding, they teamed up to put together a joint vaudeville act. Their
fifteen- or twenty-minute act included all kinds of fancy and trick roping, horses and
what Donna Livingston calls “humorous patter.”16 For the next twenty years, the
couple travelled all over North America and Europe delighting audiences with their
western act. During their travels, Weadick honed his skills at reading an audience,
promoting shows and exuding charisma and charm.17
Weadick returned to Calgary, this time with LaDue, in the winter of 1911-12.
He was in town to create a show unique to Canada – not another wild west show, emphasizing the lawlessness and rough and tumble nature of the West, but a
13 Bryden, Flores LaDue, 57. 14 Bryden, Flores LaDue, 57-62. 15 Livingstone, Cowboy Spirit, 21-24. 16 Livingstone, Cowboy Spirit, 25. 17 Livingstone, Cowboy Spirit, 27. 90
uniquely Canadian show that commemorated and celebrated law-abiding ranchers and cowboys and their disappearing way of life. Calgary already had a yearly exhibition that celebrated the agricultural and technological achievements of the
Calgary area, and Weadick’s show combined a commemoration of the past with a celebration of the present. The first Stampede was a nostalgic paean to the men that were thought to have tamed the West, and funded by four men who thought of themselves as among those who deserved to be celebrated. Max Foran also argues that Weadick was interested in adding authenticity to the “fantasy” of Wild West
Shows, and believed that a rodeo would allow people to see real cowboy skills.18 In
creating the first Calgary Stampede, Weadick made every effort to seek out the
people (mostly European men) that had been the first to arrive in the West, doing
his best to include the kind he saw as authentically western to perform authentically
western activities in the show.19 Weadick returned to Calgary in 1919 to stage another Stampede, and then again in 1923, when the Calgary Stampede and
Exhibition became an annual event, which Weadick managed until 1932. Beginning in 1923, Weadick encouraged the entire city of Calgary to sport western clothes and engage in a particularly western atmosphere for the duration of the Stampede, something wholeheartedly embraced by the city.20
In 1920, the Weadicks bought a ranch south and west of Longview, Alberta,
and west of High River, on the Highwood River that they named the Stampede
18 Max Foran, “The Stampede in Historical Context,” in Icon, Brand, Myth: The Calgary Stampede, ed. Max Foran, (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2008), 5. 19 Foran, “The Stampede,” 7. 20 Foran, “The Stampede,” 6. 91
Ranch. The couple toured eastern North America and Europe every winter and intended to use the ranch as summer residence while they were not touring, as well as a dude ranch to host tourists. In order to attract guests to his ranch, Weadick wrote letters and sent flyers to his numerous connections in eastern North America and in Europe. The Weadicks also went to pains to create the appropriate atmosphere by building a main lodge and cabins to house their guests. In order to decorate the main lodge, Weadick collected photos of rodeo champions he had known, as well as famous people he and his wife had met in their travels, and hung them on the walls of the rustic ranch house alongside brands burned into the wood.21 Raymond Patterson, neighbor to the Weadicks, and sometime dude rancher, tells us that the walls were “hung with interesting and valuable things – the letters of Charles M. Russell, the cowboy artist; gifts and trophies and fancy bridles, and signed personal photographs of famous people: Colonel ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody, the
Prince of Wales, Lord Lonsdale, Mae West, Will Rogers – a truly catholic collection.”22 Patterson also stated that an old buffalo skull was mounted above the fireplace, and “red electric lights were set in its eyeless sockets … The thing grinned ghoulishly in the flickering light of the log fire.”23 The Weadicks raised cattle and kept horses on the ranch, but these animals were part of their act or for the benefit of the dudes. The Stampede Ranch promised the usual access to a horse, guided pack, hunting and fishing trips, and other western activities, but unlike most dude ranches, the Weadicks also staged small rodeos for guests to watch or participate
21 Livingstone, Cowboy Spirit, 80. 22 Patterson, Far Pastures, 116. 23 Patterson, Far Pastures, 129. 92
in.24 In 1922, Weadick even staged a full-day stampede, and invited his neighbors
and the citizens of Calgary and High River to attend.25 For Weadick, then, cowboy
exhibitions were as much an essential part of the western experience as the usual
horseback riding and wilderness encounters.
The Stampede Ranch was fortuitously close to the EP Ranch owned by
Edward, Prince of Wales, purchased just the year before in 1919.26 The town of High
River received (and generated) a large amount of publicity when the Prince of Wales
declared his interest in the High River foothills. In some ways the Prince can be
considered a dude himself, though with more financial resources than most western
tourists. In 1919, at the end of the First World War, Edward, Prince of Wales, was
dispatched to Canada on an empire-building tour.27 He got his first taste of cowboys
when he watched a rodeo and rode a bronco in Saskatoon.28 After a grueling
schedule of public appearances, the prince needed some time to relax, and his staff
scheduled a visit to the Bar U Ranch in September of 1919,29 located across the
Highwood River from the ranch that the Weadicks would buy the next year. Though
he only spent twenty-four hours on the ranch, he was so enamoured with the area
and the lifestyle that he bought the neighbouring ranch.30 Edward named the ranch the EP Ranch, the EP standing for Edward, Prince. This ranch offered “unlimited
24 Livingstone, Cowboy Spirit, 79. 25 Livingstone, Cowboy Spirit, 87. 26 Paul Voisey, High River and the Times, (Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press, 2004), 129. 27 Simon Evans, Prince Charming Goes West: the Story of the E.P. Ranch, (Calgary: The University of Calgary Press, 1993), 9. 28 Evans, Prince Charming, 13. 29 Evans, Prince Charming, 19. 30 Evans, Prince Charming, 23. 93
opportunities for walking, hunting, fishing, and above all for riding,”31 the
traditional dude ranch draws, as well as the prince’s favourite activities. In 1923,
during one of his rare visits west, the prince attended a rodeo at the Stampede
Ranch staged especially for his benefit.32 When he met the prince, Weadick also had
the chance to pose for a photo, which when framed, joined a ranch house wall.33
Weadick capitalized on the proximity of The Stampede Ranch to the EP Ranch by
mentioning it in his brochure, offering his guests the opportunity to visit the Prince
of Wales’ ranch on horseback in his brochure.34
Aside from the rodeos and its proximity to royal property, the Weadicks’
outfit resembled other western guest ranches. According to Livingstone, they used the dude ranches of the United States as a model for their business.35 Between
Weadick’s ability to charm and entertain his guests, and LaDue’s organizational and
managerial skills, the operation ran smoothly.36 Livingstone’s accounts make it clear
that Weadick was able to make anyone feel at ease on the ranch, and keep people
entertained. In his autobiographical account of his time in Eden Valley, Far Pastures,
Raymond Patterson recounts a few of the many stories that Weadick told his friends
and guests. These stories, which are amusing and doubtless hyperbolic, illustrate
31 Evans, Prince Charming, 26. 32 Evans, Prince Charming, 94. 33 Weadick and the prince got along well, and the Weadicks were apparently fondly remembered by Edward, as evidenced by a 1941 letter from the then Duke of Windsor’s personal secretary, telling the Weadicks Duke and Duchess looked forward to seeing them on their next visit to the EP Ranch. (Letter from the Duke of Windsor to Guy Weadick, September 15, 1941. GA M1287.) 34 Brochure for The Stampede Ranch, undated. GA M1287. 35 Livingstone, Cowboy Spirit, 78. 36 Livingstone, Cowboy Spirit, 85. 94
the ways in which Weadick portrayed himself as a cowboy. In one set, he tells of
being overcharged for a shave and a haircut. Annoyed by the experience, he worked
a humorous retelling of the incident into the patter of his act, much to the enjoyment
of his mostly British and American audience. Unfortunately for Weadick, so the
story went, the barber himself was in the audience one night and recognized himself
in the narrative, and gathered up a posse to confront Weadick and demand
satisfaction in the form of a duel to the death. Weadick dodged the duel by
suggesting that the weapons be the lariat, or just fists then and there.37 In another
story, Weadick apparently recounted getting his horse into France through
recalcitrant customs by claiming that it was an item of clothing.38 Pieces in The Dude
Rancher emphasized that the most important element of a successful ranch was a host who could please his customers, no matter how difficult or demanding, and it is clear that Weadick excelled at this. The Weadicks continued to host dudes in Eden
Valley until around 1940. The couple moved to Phoenix in 1950, and LaDue passed away in 1951, and Weadick in 1953.
Like Guy Weadick, George Pocaterra was not born in the West, but he was drawn there in search of romance and adventure after reading western stories. 39
Born in 1882 in Piovene Rochette in northern Italy to a wealthy and semi-
aristocratic family involved in the production of textiles,40 Pocaterra grew up in the
Italian Alps. He spent his boyhood exploring them, and always felt an affinity for the
37 Patterson, Far Pastures, 127-128. 38 Patterson, Far Pastures, 126-127. 39 George Pocaterra, as told to Norma Piper Pocaterra, “The Son of the Mountains,” August 15, 1970, pg 2, GA M6340-181. 40 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 13. 95
landscape.41 Pocaterra spent his teen years at a boarding school in Berne,
Switzerland.42 After that, his father wanted him to enter the family’s textile business and so he sent him to England to learn about wool as his final preparation to joining the family trade.43 The textile trade failed to capture his imagination, and Pocaterra
returned to Italy only briefly. His unpublished memoirs, Son of the Mountains, state:
“George had other ideas. He had been reading romantic stories about Canada, about
hunting wild animals there: and in England, there was at that time great propaganda
about Canada. George made up his mind that he was going to go there.”44 Over
objections from his family, he secured money and permission from his father, and
set sail in 1903.
Pocaterra landed in Halifax and immediately headed towards the West.
When he arrived in Winnipeg, he had only $3.75 to his name. Luckily a Reverend
Spence, a Canadian clergyman he had met in England, lived near Winnipeg and gave
him a place to stay and helped him find work.45 Like Weadick, Pocaterra was a
master storyteller, and he recounted the story of his first Canadian job in typically
amusing fashion. He found employment with the Steels, two Scottish brothers who
had a mixed farm near Winnipeg. After they hired him, he asked how much the
brothers would pay him. They laughed and replied “I guess you don’t realize that
‘greenhorns’ like you never get paid in this part of the country. Instead, they pay us
to teach them the business. Generally, they pay two to three hundred dollars the
41 “Son of the Mountains,” 1. 42 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 13. 43 “Son of the Mountains,” 2-6. 44 “Son of the Mountains,” 6. 45 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 16. 96
first year.”46 They told him they would give him a deal and let him work for free.
Pocaterra declined this, and offered to work for a dollar a month instead, which the
brothers accepted. A position secured, Pocaterra was given his first job on the farm:
cleaning a pigsty that had not been cleaned for six months.47 In his memoirs he
described this as “wallowing in filth!”48 Disillusioned, he almost gave up and
returned home. In the end, however, he strengthened his resolve, and asked the
Steels for a raise, which he received. Soon, he was able to save enough money to
head west to Calgary, which he did with alacrity.49
Once Pocaterra arrived in Calgary, he found jobs with large ranches so that he might learn the skills he would need to run his own operation. Though he had
found farm life disillusioning, he found the romance he was looking for on the
ranches in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. “Here was the real life!” Pocaterra
wrote in his memoirs, as he described his first impressions of the ranch and the
landscape.50 In 1904, after a series of ranch jobs, Pocaterra decided he was ready for
a place of his own. Originally, he invited his cousin Arturo Talin, who had been living
in Brazil and Argentina, to join him in Canada and take up the ranch as a joint
venture.51 They found the perfect 160 acres (quarter section) on the Highwood
River in Eden Valley in 1905, and moved onto the place with tents until they could
file a claim. As part of the Canada Dominion Land’s Act, the quarter could be had for
46 “Son of the Mountains,” 9. 47 “Son of the Mountains,” 8-9. 48 “Son of the Mountains,” 10. 49 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 17. 50 “Son of the Mountains,” 13. 51 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 19. 97
a ten-dollar filing fee and a certain amount of building and farming improvements
within three years. In his memoirs, Pocaterra listed the economic advantages of that
particular location. From his description of the land, however, it is clear that the
beauty of the scenery was foremost in his mind. When he first came across the site
of his future home, he was on holiday from his current cowboy job. He bought a
horse,
and rode off into the hills at the foot of the mighty Rockies. This was virgin land, there were very few settlers. He started in the south and rode through the beautiful country until he came to the Highwood River just a few miles from where it came out from the Rockies. ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘This is where I want to make my home.’52
The land would be “perfect country for ranching. Three rivers… supplied an abundance of water… beautiful meadows of tall waving grass, and great clumps of spruce and poplar trees to provide shelter...”53 Clearly this was “Paradise.”54 For
Pocaterra, the landscape represented the romance of the West that he had crossed an ocean to find.
Unfortunately for Pocaterra, when he found his future home, he was a little short of the five dollars he needed to file the claim. He decided to raise the money in a card game. His account is clearly exaggerated, and an excellent example of his engagement with the cowboy image. He referred to the game where he won the money as “the famous poker game.”55 In his version of events, he was reluctant to
play, but the other cowboys convinced him to try a hand or two. In a scene
52 “Son of the Mountains,” 17. 53 “Son of the Mountains,” 18-19. 54 “Son of the Mountains,” 19. 55 “Son of the Mountains,” 19. 98 reminiscent of the poker game played by the cowboy character The Duke in Owen
Wister’s Sky Pilot: A Story of the Foothills, Pocaterra played through a night, a day, and another night without losing, until “the other boys bet all their money, then all their possessions even to their saddle, bridle, bed role, horses, wagons, tents.”56
Ultimately “there was a great pile of I.O.U’s.”57 Ever kind, Pocaterra “gave back a lot of his loot.”58 In Pocaterra’s reminiscences, the ability to prove his skill and sense of fair play were more important than the money he desperately needed in order to register his homestead claim. This image of a man who returns “the loot,” however, seems to exist more in story than in fact. Though Pocaterra did return some of the items he won, he kept most of it and used it to finance his new ranch. He called his place the Buffalo Head Ranch after the skulls he found as he explored his property.59
Pocaterra and his cousin soon purchased another quarter from the railroad and began to stock the ranch with horses and cattle.60 Like many American dude ranchers, Pocaterra initially planned to establish a strictly commercial endeavour.
As he built up his stock and constructed his house, he also explored westward and met the Stoney First Nations peoples who lived in the mountains and foothills west of Eden Valley and the Buffalo Head Ranch. He noted that the aboriginals “looked like the Indians in [the romantic novel] Deerslayer by Fenimore Cooper.”61
Pocaterra became fluent in Stoney, and wrote semi-anthropologically about the
56 “Son of the Mountains,” 19. 57 “Son of the Mountains,” 19. 58 “Son of the Mountains,” 20. 59 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 19-20. 60 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 20-21. 61 George Pocaterra, “The Nomadic Stoneys,” in Alberta Historical Review, Summer, 1963, quoted in Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 22. 99
people. For him, the Stoney seem to have been an integral part of the western
landscape. He had immigrated with the intention of finding the romantic West that
he had read so much about as a child. Now like all the ranchers he was an
“interloper” and he was learning about the land from those who knew it best.62
Though some of Pocaterra’s descriptions of his aboriginal neighbors seem dated and imperialistic, it is clear that he respected the wilderness skills and knowledge the
Stoney peoples possessed. His knowledge of Stoney language and customs added to his mystique and role as a cowboy and outdoorsman.
From 1905 to 1920, Pocaterra spent most of his time on his ranch, tending his cattle, camping in the foothills and mountains, and unsuccessfully attempting to find investors for his coal mine schemes. In 1921, he sold 65 acres to Harper Sibley, a wealthy businessman from New York, so Sibley could build a cabin and riding trails for his friends and family.63 Pocaterra’s first venture into the tourist trade
came in the spring of 1922, when he fenced off 40 acres of land bordering the
Highwood River for camping and hiking. He erected signs on the highway
advertising the site and offering “mountain trips with guides and horses.”64
According to Pocaterra’s memoir, in 1924 the head of the CPR tourist department
visited him and Guy Weadick to speak to them about dude ranching. He told them
that these ranches were very popular in the American West, and that he thought
62 Lecture to the Alberta Historical Society, quoted in Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 29. 63 “Recreation Land Purchase,” November 3, 1921, The Best of the Times: The Roarin’ Twenties, (High River: Century Books, 2002), 156. 64 “Pocaterra Establishes Campgrounds at Buffalo Head Ranch,” July 2, 1922, The Best of the Times: The Roarin’ Twenties, (High River: Century Books, 2002), 194. 100
guest ranching could be equally successful in the Canadian West, and suggested that
Pocaterra begin hosting guests in a more formal setting.65 In the American West,
dude ranches and railroads had an extremely mutually beneficial relationship. Dude
ranches made the West popular, and many of the trains that ran from the East to
Montana and Wyoming in the early twentieth century were full of guests.66 Railway
lines like the Northern Pacific and Burlington teamed up with the Dude Ranchers’
Association to advertise its members’ businesses to the benefit of all parties.67 It is
understandable, then, that the CPR would wish to replicate such a relationship. For
Pocaterra, it also seemed an excellent opportunity.
Pocaterra added more amenities to his ranch house and began to accept
guests by the summer of 1924.68 The Buffalo Head Ranch guest register, which runs
from 1924 until 1931, contains the names of Canadians from Calgary, Edmonton,
Winnipeg and Toronto, Americans from New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and
Virginia, and Europeans from France, England and Ireland.69 Pocaterra’s charm,
humor and storytelling ability shine through in his letters and memoirs, and photos
show him as a dashing figure, looking effortlessly handsome and the consummate
cowboy, from the top of his ten gallon hat to the bottom of his high heeled boots.
With his cosmopolitan manner, the fact that he spoke five languages, and had
intimate knowledge of the Western environment and terrain explain the Buffalo
65 “Son of the Mountains,” 29. 66 Lawrence R. Borne, Dude Ranching: A Complete History, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983), 48. 67 Borne, Dude Ranching, 75. 68 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 46. 69 GA M3640. 101
Head Ranch’s popularity. According to local legend, many of the female guests at the
Buffalo Head fell “slightly in love” with Pocaterra, perhaps because of the Spanish
gaucho songs he would sing his guests as they rode through the foothills.70 In the
summer of 1925, he even became secretly engaged to a young New York socialite,
swept off her feet by the combination of his western and cosmopolitan charm. By
the fall of 1926, she broke off the engagement, but their brief affair is evidence of
Pocaterra’s magnetism and charisma.
Pocaterra hosted guests until 1931, when the economic downturn slowed
tourism. Despite his best efforts, many of his former guests were simply unable to
afford a vacation.71 In 1932, his only guests were local Boy Scout groups.72 In 1933,
Pocaterra sold his ranch to his friends Raymond M. and Marigold Patterson, and
departed from the Highwood. His father had passed away in Italy, and he returned
to his family home to deal with the estate. Pocaterra was unsure how long he would
stay in Italy, so he sold the Buffalo Head Ranch to his friend R.M. Patterson.73
Patterson had spent a great deal of time with Pocaterra at the ranch, and the two men had taken many trips into the mountains together.74 While in Milan in 1934,
Pocaterra heard that Norma Piper, a Calgarian and coloratura soprano, had come to
Italy to study opera, he wrote to her, asking if he could call on her to discuss
Alberta.75 The two were immediately drawn to one another, and Pocaterra began to
70 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 48. 71 Letter to George Pocaterra from Dick, May 31, 1932. GA M6340-144. 72 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 56. 73 “Son of the Mountains,” 29. 74 “Son of the Mountains,” 29-30. 75 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 116. 102
focus more and more on Piper’s vocal career, until he was her full-time manager. In
1936, the two were married in Milan.76 The two remained in Italy until 1939, when
they left Milan just as war broke out across Europe.77 Unable to find Piper a singing
contract in New York, Montreal or Toronto, and running low on funds, the couple
returned to the Highwood River and rented a cabin across the river from the Buffalo
Head Ranch.78 They spent time with their neighbors, the Weadicks, getting their
mail there, and using their piano for singing practice.79 After more false starts with
Piper’s career, the couple bought property on the Ghost River northwest of Calgary
in 1941, and planned to create a kind of summer resort, while Piper would teach
music in Calgary at Mount Royal College during the winters.80 They called the ranch
Valnorma, and built a large and, considering it was built of logs and had no running
water or electricity, rather opulent home to demonstrate the possibilities of summer
cottages in the area.81 It was not until 1947, though, that the Pocaterras began to
take in guests. Though they intended to create a thriving business and expand with a
number of cabins, paying visitors, though steady, were small in number.82 By 1955,
the Pocaterras had moved to Calgary permanently, though they still spent short
vacations at Valnorma. Pocaterra died in 1972, and Piper in 1983.
Though neither the Buffalo Head Ranch nor the Stampede Ranch belonged to
the American Dude Ranchers’ Association, Weadick and Pocaterra would have felt at
76 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 159. 77 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 187. 78 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 198. 79 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 200. 80 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 215. 81 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 219. 82 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 238-239. 103
home among the members. The experiences they offered and their general business
practices were in line with what was happening at dude ranches throughout the
Rockies on both sides of the border. Undated advertising pamphlets from both
operations survive, and the language used lets prospective customers know that
they would have access to the usual pastimes. The Buffalo Head was characterized
as “A Playground for people who wish an outing amongst the most beautiful of
scenery, in a ranching country, with its picturesque, care-free life and customs,”
where one can ride and also “go hunting and fishing during the open season.”83 The brochures also invoke the same romantic wilderness and cowboy imagery used by advertisers in The Dude Rancher. When Pocaterra described the approach to his ranch, the language was rather florid, and unabashedly romantic:
When, after motoring west, from the charmingly situated town of High River, a station on the C.P.R. system, one finally arrives on the slope of the road leading down to the crossing of Sullivan Creek, one gets such a magnificent view of the famous Highwood River Valley that the memory of it will be coupled for evermore with a thrill of pleasure and longing.84
Weadick’s language was less ornate, but also emphasized the natural beauty of the
Stampede Ranch’s location, as well as its proximity to real cattle ranching country.
The brochures of both ranches are full of photos that highlight the beauty of the
landscape, as well as grinning cowboys. And of course, both promised the guests
access to horses and lots of riding. Unlike other advertisements in the Dude Rancher
the two Canadian outfits offered “Indian” as well as “Cowboy” guides.85 Both
83 Undated Buffalo Head Ranch Brochure, GA M6340. 84 Undated Buffalo Head Ranch Brochure, GA M6340. 85 Undated Buffalo Head Ranch Brochure, GA M6340, Undated Stampede Ranch Brochure, GA M1287. 104
Pocaterra and Weadick had good relationships with their aboriginal neighbours, and
they saw them as representative of a second romantic figure they could offer their
clientele.
The brochures also reassured guests about the more practical aspects of
ranch vacations. They lauded wilderness and outdoor air in general, along with the
peculiarly large appetite all dude ranch guests seem to have acquired: “The bracing
air of the Foothills and the healthy outdoor life will combine to make you do justice
to the meals served.”86 ““Home-made bread and pastry, plenty of fresh milk, cream,
butter, eggs and poultry as well as fresh meats, and vegetables are to be had.”87 Like
other operations, both brochures emphasized that the ranches were not hotels or
resorts. The Stampede Ranch brochure stated unequivocally “The Stampede Ranch
is a practical cattle ranch, enjoying real ranch life… It is not a resort.”88 It is simply a
western home and ranch that opens itself to visitors: “A hearty welcome awaits
congenial guests who appreciate sunshine and smile, sport and rest and true
Western hospitality,” stated the Buffalo Head brochure.89 Both also reassured
guests, however, that dude ranches hold plenty of opportunities for those who prefer rest and relaxation to trail rides and vigorous hikes, and that the West can be
enjoyed without having to forgo the comforts of a “first-class hotel.”90 Like advertising in The Dude Rancher, the language and imagery of the brochures affirms
86 Undated Buffalo Head Ranch Brochure, GA M6340. 87 Undated Stampede Ranch Brochure, GA M1287. 88 Undated Stampede Ranch Brochure, GA M1287. 89 Undated Buffalo Head Ranch Brochure, GA M6340. 90 Undated Stampede Ranch Brochure, GA M1287. 105
the western imagery and understanding of prospective dudes, while also offering
reassurance that their surroundings and accommodations will not be too unfamiliar.
The very bedrock of the cowboy and dude ranch experiences that Weadick
and Pocaterra offered were outdoor and wilderness activities. One prospective
guest wrote a rather formal letter to Pocaterra hoping to make a reservation at the
Buffalo Head. Despite the stiffness of some of the phrases, it is clear that she was
looking forward to spending time at “what is familiarly known as a ‘dude ranch.’”91
She made her expectations clear to Pocaterra: “I have not done much riding, but I
like it. In fact I am interested in most forms of out-of-doors recreation, including hiking. As I do not know what you generally arrange, I should like to know if hiking swimming etc can be indulged in. I am not over fastidious, so would be easy to cater for.”92 This prospective guest was drawn to the wilderness and wanted to engage
directly with it through physical activity. A letter Pocaterra received when he was
accepting guests at his Valnorma property also stressed the desire to get away from
the urbanized world as much as possible. Edmund Kellogg of New York wrote to
Pocaterra hoping to book a two-week pack trip for himself and his wife: “We are anxious to get into unexplored country as much as possible,”93 he wrote, suggesting
that for the Kellogg’s the natural aspect of Alberta’s landscape was what the couple
were most interested in. By asking for unexplored country, it is clear that the
Kelloggs saw the West as a wilderness space, a place that would give them the
chance to engage with nature on an individual and independent level, and as a
91 Letter to George Pocaterra from Leslie J. Rosling, July 6, 1932. GA M6340-144. 92 Letter to George Pocaterra from Leslie J. Rosling, July 6, 1932. GA M6340-144. 93 Letter to George Pocaterra from Edmund Kellogg, June 2, 1941. GA M6340-87. 106
complete escape from the urban confines of New York City. Another former guest wrote Pocaterra telling him that though she was unable to revisit him, she still yearned to get away from urban spaces. She told him how she missed Calgary, which felt like home to her, but that she had a wonderful stay in a cabin in the California mountains that “reminded” her “very strongly of Banff”94 and seemed to make up
for not coming to Calgary. She told Pocaterra about the “quaintest cabin you ever
saw, with wood stoves, oil lamps, and no mail in or out.”95 The rest of her newsy letter discussed her busy life in Pasadena, but in this section, she rhapsodized over the scenery and her solitude. “It was very beautiful and I had some wonderful long walks and rides… the vegetation was heavy and there were masses of wild flowers. I loathed coming back to town again.”96 Though the writer seems happy with her
present situation, a current of anti-urbanism runs through the letter, and we see her
strong desire to spend some time away from the hustle and bustle of urban living.
The Stampede and Buffalo Head also managed to provide the necessary
western atmosphere that dudes craved. A former guest mournfully wrote to
Pocaterra telling him that he could not afford to come west that summer, but that “I
sure wish I could be looking forward to spending a few weeks with you … George for
I would like nothing better than to be on the Highwood again with you and to renew
acquaintances with all those fine people that I met through you.”97 It is clear from
94 Letter to George Pocaterra from Jan Sharps, June 23, 1932. GA M6340-144. 95 Letter to George Pocaterra from Jan Sharps, June 23, 1932. GA M6340-144. 96 Letter to George Pocaterra from Jan Sharps, June 23, 1932. GA M6340-144. 97 Letter to George Pocaterra from Dick, May 31, 1932. GA M6340-144. 107
the context of the letter that the writer was referring to the ‘real’ westerners he met
like Weadick, the legendary storyteller and entertainer.
Letters also illustrate the appeal of both ranches to women. LaDue, a
seasoned rider and performer, gave women at the Stampede Ranch “special
attention.”98 Moreover, both Pocaterra and Weadick seemed to fill the romantic
figure of the cowboy to the woman dudes. After receiving a photo of Pocaterra, Jan
Sharps wrote to say, “Thanks ever so much for the photo. I love it and it is sitting on
my desk now. Several of my friends have asked who the goodlooking cowboy is!!
Now don’t get a swelled head!!!”99 Guy Weadick was a notorious ladies man, and
was often so friendly with other women that it caused problems with his wife. After
an incident in which LaDue suspected him of having a tryst in one of their cars, she
refused to ride in it for months, insisting on driving herself in a separate vehicle any
time they left the ranch.100 Both ranches, then, were well equipped to provide all the
cowboy time guests could want.
The Buffalo Head and the Stampede both received support and publicity from the local newspaper, the High River Times. In his study, Paul Voisey argues that the
Times engaged in a boosterism that promoted small town living and agrarian
pursuits as more moral and healthful than urban lifestyles.101 Part of this
boosterism involved praising High River’s rural and wilderness surroundings and
natural beauty.102 As the car became more common and affordable, so too did
98 Undated Stampede Ranch Brochure, GA M1287. 99 Letter to George Pocaterra from Jan Sharps, June 23, 1932. GA M6340-144. 100 Livingstone, Cowboy Spirit, 85-86, Bryden, Flores LaDue, 33. 101 Voisey, The Times, 119. 102 Voisey, The Times, 124. 108
tourism in the Canadian West. For the first time, people could travel great distances
when and where they wanted to, and Voisey argues that the Times worked to point
out all of the opportunities inherent in High River’s wilderness areas and ranching
country.103 Dude ranching, then, with its emphasis on both ranching and wilderness,
gave the Times a great deal to promote. When the Weadicks and Pocaterra began
accepting guests on their ranches, the Times was uniformly positive about their
endeavors, suggesting that these activities could only benefit the surrounding
communities. This mirrors pieces reprinted in The Dude Rancher from Montana and
Wyoming newspapers celebrating the guest ranching industry and the ways in
which it would benefit local businesses. In addition, both these American
newspapers and the Times used similar imagery to describe the attractions and
benefits of the West, revealing that the anti-urban and pro-wilderness currents existed on both sides of the border.
This started early. On February 26, 1920, the Times published an article announcing the purchase of “the Kuck place” by Guy Weadick and “Flores La Due,” and their intention to turn the ranch into a “rendezvous which will afford patrons the experience and pleasure of a bit of the ‘real thing’ in ‘wild west.’”104 The article
continued on to describe the activities guests might take part in on the ranch, that
the business was based on the successful guest ranches of Wyoming; it concluded by
stating that “the going and coming of tourists, and other benefits of the enterprise,
103 Voisey, The Times, 128. 104 “Guy Weadick Buys Kuck Place; First Dude Ranch Proposed,” February 26, 1920, The Best of the Times: The Roarin’ Twenties, (High River: Century Books, 2002), 67. 109
cannot but be an advantage to the town.”105 The tone of the article is
overwhelmingly positive. An article a few months later gives more details about the
Stampede Ranch, and enthusiastically underlines the romantic nature of guest
ranching and wilderness vacations. If those living an agrarian or ranching life
already needed assistance understanding why a tourist would choose a ranch
vacation, the Times notes that “the romance of life among the cowboys on a western
ranch has been depicted so often in the movies” that people are eager to give it a try
for themselves.106 As the article describes the outfit, it also make special note of the
authenticity of the experiences “on a real western Canadian ranch, where fishing
and hunting are plentiful and where the mountain scenery is magnificent beyond
words.”107 “One finds himself in the wilderness amongst the haunts of the Big Horn
sheep and Grizzly bears, and where the Rainbow and Dolly Varden trout disport
themselves in the crystal clear pools of snow-fed mountain streams.”108 The
boosterism in the Times, then, is based on cowboy and wilderness ideals.
Many photos of George Pocaterra and Guy Weadick survive. In many of these photos, both men are dressed in cowboy gear. Donna Livingstone argues that
“Throughout his life, Guy adopted the pose and costume of the cowboy of stage and popular literature. He became a walking, talking advertisement for the cowboy spirit.”109 George Pocaterra was known in the Eden Valley area for going
105 “Guy Weadick Buys Kuck Place, 67. 106 “Cowboy Life on a Western Ranch,” June 17, 1920, The Best of the Times: The Roarin’ Twenties, (High River: Century Books, 2002), 82. 107 “Cowboy Life on a Western Ranch,” 82. 108 “Cowboy Life on a Western Ranch,” 82. 109 Livingston, Cowboy Sprit, 34. 110 everywhere on horseback and always being turned out in boots, chaps, fringed jacket, hat and neckerchief, no matter the occasion.110 It is difficult to distinguish between how much these men lived the cowboy life, and how much they performed it. In any case, this living and performing was central to their success as guest ranchers.
110 Hamblin and Finch, Diva and the Rancher, 43. 111
CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION
In a 2011 episode of the popular sitcom Modern Family, which depicts the
lives of an extended family living in Los Angeles, the whole clan takes a trip to a
dude ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. When they arrive, many of the characters exit
the plane already wearing their western gear: fringed buckskin jackets, Stetsons and
cowboy boots. When the family arrives, a wrangler gallops up to them and hurls a
tomahawk into a target. He then tells them “Here at the Lost Creek Ranch you’re
gonna ride, you’re gonna rope, and you’re gonna shoot. You’re gonna see a sky so
full of stars it’ll put your city lights to shame. And when it’s all done, you might just
encounter a piece of yourselves you never knew was there.”1 The wrangler could be
reading from an advertisement from the The Dude Rancher from the 1930s. The
men, women and children of the family are all offered the chance to learn and take
part in the great outdoors.
The episode also uses the dude ranch as setting to explore the masculinity of
three of the main characters. The patriarch, usually traditionally manly, is made
absurd as he fails to learn to ride a horse, and while the wrangler attempts to seduce
his much younger, very attractive wife. At the same time, his son-in-law who is more
in touch with his feelings has spent time practicing cowboy arts so that he can prove
his manliness to his father-in-law. “I’ve been practicing like crazy all my cowboy
1 Paul Corrigan, Brad Walsh and Dan O’Shannon, “Dude Ranch,” Modern Family, season 3, episode 1, directed by Jason Winer, aired September 21, 2011, (Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2012), DVD. 112 skills: shootin’, ropin’, pancake eatin’. Why? Because sometimes I feel like [my father-in-law] doesn’t respect me as a man.”2 Throughout the episode, he shows off his prowess hoping for praise.
The gay son of the patriarch, hoping to adopt a son of his own, has his partner take photos of him performing cowboy acts to highlight his masculinity to prospective adoptive mothers. His failure to learn to shoot, herd cattle and even catch a ball properly provokes a personal crisis as he worries whether or not he is good enough at being a man to raise a son. In his usual urban environment, he does not face these kinds of tests or challenges to his masculinity. He recovers when he blows up a birdhouse with his young nephew, using a firecracker that the two characters gleefully state could never be set off in the city. By contrast to the urban men, the dude wrangler is a talented roper, rider and storyteller, and apparently experienced in romancing ladies. In this contemporary popular culture portrayal of guest ranching, the cowboy and his skillset are a kind of cultural short hand for masculinity. Though the series often examines family and gender roles, the cowboy is presented as de facto masculine, and the West a place to prove masculinity.
The western environment is also highlighted in the episode. There are many shots of the surrounding mountain scenery, and the majority of the episode is shot outside, either in nature or in a corral with cattle. When one character runs away, the wrangler emphasizes the need to find him quickly, telling the family “right now he is facing treacherous terrain: sudden drops, mountain lions, hungry bears, oh and
2 Modern Family, “Dude Ranch.” 113 wolverines – that is if the hypothermia didn’t already get him.”3 All the characters are shown enjoying the natural setting at some point in the episode, moving through it confidently. One of the characters sums up their trip: “All in all it was a great vacation… Out there on the range, under that great big sky, we found a part of ourselves we never knew was there…”4
Finally, the episode makes it clear that dude ranching is a reproduction for the benefit of the tourist. As the wrangler attempts to seduce the patriarch’s wife, he tells her “You come up here for the cowboy experience – you’re looking at him.”5 She rejects him, and her husband rides up just in time to defend his wife’s honour by telling him to back off. The wrangler responds by saying, “This is all part of the package. If I didn’t play the bad guy, you wouldn’t get to ride in and be the big hero.”6 Though the episode mocks some of the conventions of dude ranching, it also takes for granted that viewers will be familiar with the guest ranch and the mythic imagery of cowboys and the West. These kinds of vacations are no longer as popular as they once were, but the dude ranch still enjoys a well-defined place in our cultural imagination. The audience is expected to implicitly understand that these urban dwellers need a respite from city living, and that they are experiencing things that would be impossible in their usual surroundings.
Guest ranching developed as an antidote to modern living, and as an outlet for people to explore their cowboy fantasies while accessing the romantic western
3 Modern Family, “Dude Ranch.” 4 Modern Family, “Dude Ranch.” 5 Modern Family, “Dude Ranch.” 6 Modern Family, “Dude Ranch.” 114
environment in a direct way. The desire for these kinds of experiences grew out of
feelings of anxiety around living in tightly packed urban spaces. Urban living
restricted freedom and masculinity, and the elaborate codes of behaviour that made
city living possible were considered constrictive for both sexes. Men especially,
however, were limited in urban spaces. They were unable to fully realize their
masculinity when constantly surrounded by women or working in a sedentary job.
At the same time, the unsettled West was understood as a place of purity and
renewal, and increasingly urban dwellers thought of access to untamed spaces as
spiritually and physically important. The cowboy, antithesis of the metropolitan
man, was becoming increasingly popular and well-known. Literature created and disseminated a popular image of the cowboy to people all over the world, but especially in eastern North America.
This literary cowboy was a complex and well-recognized figure. He appeared in many mediums, including pulp, dime and romantic novels. People from all walks of life read about the cowboy and his exploits. These stories described his essential character, while at the same time detailing the western wilderness that he moved through. This constructed cowboy was nuanced enough to appeal to readers of sensational and literary fiction, but monolithic enough to be instantly familiar. The cowboy was admired by children and adults almost equally, and offered something to men and women. Men found an exemplary of masculinity, a character and physicality to emulate. Women found a romantic figure, and a space that allowed them more freedom from the restrictive gender roles of the East. Children found a land of excitement and adventure. 115
Men, women and children could all access their western and cowboy fantasies by vacationing at a dude ranch. People came West to experience what they had read about, and ranchers strove to fulfil the expectations that had been fostered in their guests by popular culture and imagination. The ranchers themselves engaged with and expanded the imagery as they did their best to attract and meet the expectations of their guests. Advertisements to lure guests west balanced accessibility and exclusivity of the landscape and the experiences of the cowboy. At the same time, the ranchers lived immersed in the western atmosphere, and understood they were dealing in cultural imagery, while also believing in that imagery themselves.
Guy Weadick, Florence LaDue and George Pocaterra were all strongly drawn to the West. When they ran their guest ranches, they offered their guests access to the West, the experiences curated by the lens of their own experiences and perceptions of the cowboy. Their own original conceptions of the West were built on the same popular culture that their guests were familiar with, and they added detail and colour with their own experiences. Though Pocaterra and Weadick were both
Easterners, growing up far away from the western landscape, they transformed themselves into cowboys so convincingly that they based their businesses on their personas, blurring the line between performance and real life.
Over time, the Buffalo Head Ranch was subsumed into surrounding ranches, but the Stampede Ranch operated under the original name until 2013. After the
Weadicks sold the ranch, it continued as a guest ranch until 1975. But from 1975 until 2013, it was a working cattle ranch and a residential home for boys with 116
complex behavioural issues.7 For a short time, girls lived there as well, but the ranch was almost exclusively home to boys. In the early 1970s, Mervyn Edey toured a series of residential homes for boys. Troubled by what he saw, he founded the
Stampede Ranch as an alternative.8 According to his granddaughter Fawna Bews, he
told the “government” to “give me three of your toughest kids and we will provide
the environment, nature and a family and it will work.”9 The ranch was built on the
principles of fresh air, removal from urban environments, and the sense of confidence and responsibility to be gained from working with the ranch animals.
The facility held these values until its closure.10
In the latter years of its existence, the facility had a strong First Nations
component and population. The opening of a short YouTube documentary depicts a
young Aboriginal boy running up a hill on the ranch. “I like running, because I feel
free running up that hill”11 he says, literally and figuratively released from the
constricting urban environment. A graduate of the ranch recounts his first long
journey to the place: “Coming down the highway thinking, ‘Oh my God, where am I
going? Am I ever going to see civilization again?”12 The background shots of
7 “Stampede Ranch (for kids), Edey Ranches, accessed, April 11, 2015, http://www.edeyranches.com/announcements/stampede-ranch-for-kids/ 8 “Our Story,” The Stampede Ranch for Kids, accessed June 20, 2014, http://www.stampederanchforkids.com/Our_Story.html. 9 Bruce Campbell, “Unique program for troubled youth closing,” Okotoks Western Wheel, September 11, 2013. 10 “FAQ’s,” The Stampede Ranch for Kids, accessed June 20, 2014, http://www.stampederanchforkids.com/FAQ_s.html. 11 “Stampede Ranch for Kids, Alberta, Canada http://www.stampederanchforkids.com,” YouTube Video, 6:00, posted by Fawna Bews, June 10, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT9rqLbOWAM 12 “Stampede Ranch for Kids, Alberta, Canada,” YouTube Video. 117
mountain views, pastured horses and aspen stands on the foothills serve to
underscore the wild aspects of the area. Another graduate notes: “The Stampede
Ranch helped me grow in a lot of ways. It helped me with my work ethic, with
respect for people, the leadership that it’s taught me and the experience itself
opened me up to a whole new world of adventure.”13 Another young boy talks about
his connection with the horses, and how easy they are to talk to. The facility strongly relied on the rejuvenating and purifying aspects of a wilderness space, combined with the upright masculine role model of the cowboy. Children were given access to the outdoors and the responsibilities and duties of a cowboy or ranch hand in equal measure. The concepts of the moral and spiritual transformative abilities of the
West, as well as the ability of the cowboy lifestyle to properly mould a boy into a man, were central to the ranch and its methods of therapy for the children.
The facility closed because of lack of funding.14 When that happened, Denise
Rose, the superintendent of the school board lamented the loss, saying: ““It feels
sad,” she said. “They have done such good work up there. For some kids the
Stampede Ranch and working with nature and the horses really clicked with
them.””15 The ranch provided a transformative experience for many children. In the
video, they cite the stability and warmth of their caretakers, but just as often the
wilderness, horses and outdoor work.
The images and cultural constructs that created the appeal of guest ranching
are embedded in western culture, and drew thousands of people across seas and
13 “Stampede Ranch for Kids, Alberta, Canada,” YouTube Video. 14 Campbell, “Unique program.” 15 Campbell, “Unique program.” 118 over continents. Some came for a vacation and others more permanently. Even many of those that were permanent residents of the West could not help but be swept up in the seductive blend of reality and imagination they experienced daily.
The cowboy and the West promised an antidote to modern living. All the problems of the city and modern society would be left behind, leaving people free to experience a “warm and vital reality,”16 which was open to men, women and children. In the wilderness, perhaps with a horse, people could break free of the constriction of eastern mores and clothes, breathe deeply and discover themselves.
Though dude ranches today are a less popular vacation destination than in earlier times, the cowboy and his lifestyle have become an easily recognizable shorthand for personal freedom and healthy vitality.
16 Mrs. Harry Hart, “Entertainment Problem on Dude Ranches,” The Dude Rancher, April, 1935, 10. 119
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Archival Sources
The Glenbow Archives (GA) M1287 M6340 M6340-87 M6340-144 M6340-181 M6340-198
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Allen, Dr. W.A. “Dear Editor,” The Dude Rancher, July & August, 1938.
Belden. “You go western as soon as you arrive on a dude ranch and have been given a horse and outfit to call your own as long as you stay. The same adventurous spirit which led the pioneer a century ago to seek the undiscovered draws Youth to the romantic West.” Photograph. The Dude Rancher, January, 1934.
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121
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122
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