Eaton's Ranch: The First Dude Ranch in America

The concept of paying to work on a ranch was invented by accident. Howard Eaton ran a cattle operation in the Dakotas, starting in eighteen seventy-nine, with his brothers Willis and Alden, and Eastern friends kept showing up and staying all summer. The Eatons kept feeding them, the friends kept coming back, and eventually Howard realized he was running a hotel that didn't charge. Eventually he started charging. The dude ranch was born.

In nineteen oh four, the Eaton brothers moved their operation west to Wolf Creek Canyon in the Bighorn Mountains, fifteen miles west of Sheridan, Wyoming. The terrain was grander, the summers were cooler, and the country was open enough to run serious trail trips into the mountains. They built a set of low wooden cabins along the creek, hired wranglers, and told their Eastern guests to come prepared to ride.

Eaton's Ranch, as it came to be known, quickly became one of the most famous destinations in the American West. Theodore Roosevelt had been a friend of Howard Eaton's from the Dakota days. Artists, writers, and East Coast families who wanted their children to spend a summer on horseback made the Burlington train run to Sheridan and transferred to wagons for the canyon road. The ranch's reputation for genuine Western experience rather than theatrical Western experience set the standard for what a dude ranch was supposed to be.

Howard Eaton died in nineteen twenty-two. The ranch passed to family members and has remained in continuous operation ever since, making it the oldest operating dude ranch in the United States. Guests still sleep in the original-era cabins along Wolf Creek. They still ride into the Bighorn Mountains on the same trails. The Burlington Railroad is long gone. The creek sounds the same.

Eaton's Ranch is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is open by reservation and has a waiting list that runs years.