Ralph Lauren's Seventeen Thousand Acres: The Double R L Ranch
Near Ridgway, Colorado
Among the large cattle ranches spread across the country around Ridgway is one of the most famous privately owned ranches in the American West. The Double R L Ranch belongs to the fashion designer Ralph Lauren, who acquired the property in this part of southwestern Colorado. The ranch covers approximately seventeen thousand acres of the rolling Colorado high country, making it one of the larger private landholdings in this part of the state.
Lauren's connection to the American West runs through the core of his brand. The Polo Ralph Lauren aesthetic draws heavily on the imagery of the frontier, the working ranch, the cowboy, and the open range. The Double R L Ranch represents that identity expressed as an actual place rather than a catalog image.
Lauren named a line of rugged outdoor clothing after the ranch, using the Double R L label for western wear built around the working ranch aesthetic. The ranch operates as a functioning cattle operation, not simply a showcase property, running cattle across the high-country pastures of the Uncompahgre Valley. Its presence in the Ridgway area is part of a quiet geography of private investment that runs through this corner of Colorado, alongside ski communities and mountain towns that draw those who want genuine remoteness.
The ranch is privately held and not open to visitors, but the scale of the property means that much of the landscape visible from the roads around Ridgway passes across its land.
