Sunday Funday Monday Leftover Knowledge Drip
Every Monday at 7pm central, TipsyRoo and I host (except when we don't) a live community event where, collectively, we solve a NY Times Sunday crossword puzzle (without using the internet!). Each week following the episode either I, or the community, will select a clue/answer from that puzzle and I will delve further into the history & look for fun facts.
Drip #4: Dude Ranch
Puzzle Date: January 25th, 2015
Puzzle Theme: Twist Ending
Episode: 44, recorded live on January 25th, 2021
Clue: Western vacation spot
Answer: dude ranch
BUCKLE UP, WE’RE GOING RANCHIN’
I've heard of a "dude ranch" hell, I've even seen City Slickers (don't remember much of it), but I never knew exactly what a dude ranch was; I assumed it had something to do with cowboys and old west living but really, I'd prefer to believe that it's a large fenced in gentle overly-green pasture where an immaculate old west farmhouse sits with endless amounts of handsome muscular men wandering around open-robed while participating in meaningless activities. HOWEVER...
In the US, a dude ranch was (and still is) a popular vacation destination where visitors can experience a bit of western living and participate in various western activities such as horse-back riding, cattle wrangling, and campfire sing-alongs! Yeeeeehaw! In Arizona, there are 10 dude ranches, the majority of them surrounding the Tucson area and there’s one near Tombstone.
The Dude Ranch appears to be a testament to American Capitalism likely ushered in by Hollywood through the exaggeration of the heroic cowboy life. This helped generate feelings of nostalgia, and the dude ranch, also known as a "guest ranch", continues to enable people to partake in an edited/watered down version of frontier living. In addition, some of these ranches are known as "hunting ranches" where game is confined to the property.
Hollywood produced 100 western pictures a year throughout the 1920's and between 1930 and 1954 over 2,000 low budget westerns were produced.
A SHORT HISTORY
The Dude Ranchers Association has a brief history of the dude ranch that likely started with Teddy Roosevelt & his tales of western adventures in the late 19th century and was further promoted with the expansion of the railroad.
See? Short history. Unless you look at the supplied link, then it’s longer.
DUDE. WHERE’S MY RANCH?
Why the "dude" in "dude ranch"?
Dude is a slang, somewhat demeaning and shortened version of "Yankee Doodle" meant to refer to city dwellers (easterners) visiting that were "not from around here"; the term was applied equally to men and women. They were often well-to-do, wanted to experience the wild west without sacrificing life or limb, and could afford travel by train. Westerners had a simple test to determine whether someone was a "dude": if they washed behind their ears, they were a dude.
This next paragraph sounds like the setting for a popular HBO series...
The dude ranches of the 1920's were largely a playground for the rich. The ranches were not luxurious, but the journey west was expensive and most dudes stayed for several weeks, if not the whole summer. The week-long vacation of the average middle class American did not allow for such extravagance. The dude ranch quickly became accepted as a society vacation.
Here’s an interesting <thing> I found interesting (yes, I’m aware; redundancy is my specialty and something I’m good at):
In 1958, Drew and Marge Towne purchased what today is White Stallion Ranch. They decided to rename it The Black Stallion after their favorite horse book. After they realized that the initials "BS" would be unacceptable, they renamed it again to White Stallion Ranch.
Can find more interesting <things> here.
I found this next bit in one of the reference links:
It was estimated that 10% of the ranches were owned and run by former dudes, and even the president of the Dude Ranchers Association in 1940 was a Princeton graduate ("Dudes Converge").
Is "Dudes Converge" the name of the Princeton graduate? Because if so, that's an AMAZING name (for the ranch or the caretaker) in my idea of a dude ranch. Anyway...
FINAL THOUGHT(S)
Throughout this research, I couldn't help but feel a bit sad and angry as I read through the "hardships" some early ranchers had. Many of us know NOW that this land was stolen from the indigenous people that have been here for over 50,000 years (way before that dipshit “discovered” America), but American history tries really hard to teach otherwise. So yeah, fascinating to learn about the history of dude ranches, but knowing the truth has a way of changing how you see & interpret things.
And here’s my “favorite” piece of information:
The dude ranch is a reproduction, just like the western films, books, and wild west shows. People are not interested in the cowboy lifestyle because of what it was, but because of its "aura" the mythic status it has attained. These reproductions have sanctified the cowboy and the ranch life into something more than it ever was. The dude ranch retains the aura and that is what people came for.
REFERENCES
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA98/zimmerman/duderanch/frame1.html
https://duderanchfoundation.org/history-of-dude-ranches/
https://archive.org/details/ohrangerbookabou00albrrich/page/17/mode/2up
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dude
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=dude
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guest_ranch
Sunday Funday Monday is the brain-child of TipsyRoo that I’ve been honored to be a part of as he continues to tolerate me. Past episodes can be found on YouTube.
