THE HISTORY OF DUDE RANCHES: FROM CATTLE COUNTRY TO A CENTURY OF WESTERN HOSPITALITY

The national Dude Ranchers’ Association tells the story of the origins of dude ranching. This uniquely American vacation experience began with Howard Eaton, who started the Custer Trail Ranch in the Dakota Badlands in the years after the Civil War era cattle boom of the 1880s. He was soon joined by his brothers, Alden and Willis, along with a Pennsylvania friend, A.C. Huidekoper. The Eatons loved their new life so much that their letters home, full of enthusiasm for hunting, fishing, and riding the open range, ended up published in a New York newspaper.

One reader took particular interest: a young Theodore Roosevelt, who traveled out to the Badlands, bought the nearby Maltese Cross Ranch, and struck up a lasting friendship with the Eatons. Word spread, and soon Eastern visitors were showing up at the Custer Trail Ranch expecting the same hospitality Roosevelt had enjoyed.

A harsh winter and wildfire in 1886 forced the Eatons to look closely at their books. They discovered they had served roughly 2,200 free meals the previous year and calculated they would need to charge about $10 a week per guest to keep the ranch afloat. What started as a financial necessity became a genuine hospitality model built around riding, ranch chores, and the restorative quality of life on the range, a model that would come to define dude ranching everywhere. Learn more about this history from the Dude Ranch Association.

The Miller family began dude ranching in the Gallatin Canyon of Montana in 1922. Ernest was an accomplished hunting guide who travelled throughout North America and Grace focused on the dude ranch operation. In 1945, when looking for a way to be in the business year round, they found an abandoned ranch school for young men that had been called Fresnal Ranch School, in the Baboquivari Mountains southwest of Tucson. The Millers travelled north and south every year until 1961, when the second generation family members each took on one ranch –Barb and Ron Hymas took over the Montana operation and Jan and Bob Miller took over Arizona Elkhorn Ranch. Today the Montana Elkhorn Ranch is owned by the Minton Family and Jan and Bob’s daughter Linda managed it for many years. Here in Arizona, Charley and Mary Miller and their daughters Alicia and Clara and son-in-law Alvaro Campos manage the ranch. The Millers feel fortunate to have their 4th generation moving into management of the ranch.

That first meeting, held on September 27 and 28, 1926, became the first official gathering of what would become the Dude Ranchers’ Association (DRA), the governing body of the West’s dude ranch industry. Ranchers, railroad officials, and national park representatives came together to standardize practices, coordinate advertising, and protect fish and game in the areas surrounding member ranches.

Larry Larom of Valley Ranch became the DRA’s first president. Ernest Miller of Elkhorn Ranch was elected secretary-treasurer at that inaugural meeting. Elkhorn Ranch and twenty-five other ranches signed on as charter members that first year, and the number nearly doubled to forty-seven the following year.