We have been talking a lot about people who go to the woods to experience life in a different way for a little while. These people weren't much different from the movement that happened at approximately that same time as ranchers out West began to supplement their income from ranching by also bringing in tourists so they could experience a little of what life was like on the prairie. The similarities are striking: you had a variety of options for the sort of experience that you wanted, from more rustic on a real working ranch to more carefree on a vacation oriented ranch, and just as the guides in the Adirondacks were romanticized and often characterized by a specific persona the cowboys of the vacation ranches were even asked to play the "cowboy" role. The most interesting difference to me is that the tourists out West were called "dudes" and the ranches they visited were called "dude ranches." "Dude" was a term applied to all tourists, regardless of age or sex. A side-note to this is that around the same time as white-tailed deer were being extensively hunted in the East, bison were being hunted equally vigorously out West. They have experienced a come-back similar to that of the beavers.
But while looking up these ranches, I happened upon an article talking about dude ranches in the Adirondacks. Apparently, after the era of the great camps, and starting around 1930, a large number of ranches sprang up in Warren County (Lake George/Sacandaga area) to the point where Warren County was known as the dude ranch capital of the East. They basically provided a Western flavored vacation experience including horseback riding and some rodeo action. People would come from the cities to meet the cowboys and to be in that sort of vacation atmosphere. The ranches even imported some cowboys from the West, and remained popular until the 70's and 80's when the focus of the tourists changed yet again. Some continue to exist today with slightly changed business models.
While this may seem corny to most (it would to me too if I had never heard of a dude ranch), I would argue that it's just another way of experiencing "wilderness" that apparently had vast appeal!
Picture of a dude ranch trail ride from the Adirondack Museum
Journal article on Dude ranches in the Adirondacks
Relevant portion on dude ranches from "Arizona and the West"
I really enjoyed this post! This was something new to me that I had never heard of before. I guess this is just another example of how tourism in the Adirondacks developed to cater to such a broad range of individuals.
ReplyDeleteI cannot believe I did not think to write something like this! I worked on a dude ranch for the last two summers, and we were actually just talking about romantic tourism today in class and I got me thinking about cowboys. Just like life in the park is romanticized, so too is the life of the rancher. Thought very few people actually want to live in the park or be cowboys, many will pay surprising amounts of money to recreate the the romantic aspects of these lifestyles. Thank you for bringing this interesting comparison to light!
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