The Call of the Open Range

Unlike many booklets about dude ranches presented here, this one doesn’t provide detailed descriptions of the various ranches. Instead, one page lists well over 100 dude ranches, fishing camps, and mountain lodges with their nearest train stations, post offices, and rates. A map of Montana and northern Wyoming pins down the locations of all of these resorts and ranches.

Click image to download an 17.0-MB PDF of this 16-page booklet.

Most of the rest of the booklet is photographs of what life was like on the ranches or, on one page, what life was like on the North Coast Limited on the way to the ranches. Only about three pages are text. A printer’s mark on page 15 says “form 6516–41” which dates it to 1941.

Most of the ranches charged $40 to $50 per week ($800 to $1,000 in today’s money), but a couple were under $20 (probably not including food) and a couple of others were as high as $70 (both located in Jackson Hole, which must have been as expensive then as it is today).


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