Maggie Palazzari evangelizes about Sylvan Dale Guest Ranch on the Big Thompson River.
She raves about the “Cowgirl Round-Up” — like a slumber party with horses, plus a cowboy serenade. She so adores this Western lifestyle — riding horses and driving cattle — that she has visited four times in four years and recently invited her sister to meet her at the ranch for a family reunion.
Jenny Mayer didn’t take long to accept. It took just momentary reflection upon the history of dude ranches, and these changing times.
“I thought, ‘Are they going to go away or be here? I’d better do it before it’s impossible,’ ” said Mayer, eating a steak-and-baked-potato dinner at the picnic tables as dusk fell on this 62-year-old dude ranch. “I don’t know what the future holds.”
That is a key question as the Old West morphs into the New West, and dude ranches fall victim to soaring land prices, tough economic realities and a new generation of guests who would rather eat bruschetta than beans and who demand a hot tub after a long day in the saddle.
In the past 25 years, the Colorado Dude and Guest Ranch Association has lost more than half its members, from about 68 to 30. In Arizona, there are now just nine dude ranches — compared with the 1960s, when there were nearly 50 in the Tucson area alone.
“The dude-ranching tradition is a little bit endangered, especially in places where there is development pressure,” said David Jessup, who co-owns the Sylvan Dale Guest Ranch with his sister, Susan.
They’ve started to sell homesteads, a small collection of 4-acre lots that start at $250,000, plus a membership fee of $9,000 that gives access to all dude-ranch amenities. The slogan on the marketing brochure captures the zeitgeist: “New West Homesites, Old West Legacy.”
The Jessup siblings, who grew up on this family-run dude ranch, are intent upon preserving the place.
“The ranch has diversified over the past 30 to 40 years in order to survive,” Susan said.
They do weddings and holiday dinners and bunk-and-breakfast weekends, along with the Cowgirl Round-Up with a yoga class, moonlight ride, campfire and s’mores.
They’ve also put 60 percent of their land into conservation easement, which ensures the land won’t be developed — and also lowers their taxes.
And, in 2006, they finally added a hot tub to the dude ranch, fulfilling the No. 1 request from guests.
These days, most dude ranches have Jacuzzis and also offer activities such as rock climbing and foot reflexology.
“We’re starting to drift toward the resort side even as we try to stay true to the cowboy image and make sure people get the ranch experience,” said Bob Foster, president of the Colorado Dude Ranch Association, who owns the Lost Valley guest ranch near Sedalia.
“A lot of ranches are asking what their guests want, and then trying to fit that into the cultural thing called guest ranching. Some are doing it very well, others are slower on the uptake, and some are way out ahead and too much like a resort.”
There’s a constant tension, he said, trying to match the high-style expectations of 21st-century guests with what he calls “the three H’s”: horses, hats, and history.
The solution for Penny Persson at the Colorado Cattle Co. & Guest Ranch is to offer a “hybrid experience” that blends a working cattle ranch with the comforts of a five-star resort.
Guests can work the ranch all day, branding and roping, then return at night to soft chenille bathrobes, huge bath sheets — not mere towels — and fall into cushy beds with deluxe mattresses and down comforters imported from Sweden.
For those who correctly sleuth out what guests want, and protect their core business of horses, “the future of dude ranching is very bright,” said John Fisher, president of The Home Ranch, which he says has been full all summer.
That’s how Melanie Timmins sees it too.
She and her husband, Patrick, recently bought the scenic Rawah Guest Ranch near Glendevey at the Wyoming border, where they are trying to preserve a tradition of a life with horses and without technology — while providing the extras.
“This new generation is about everything extreme,” she said. “Everything’s an experience. You go to Starbucks and sit there having an experience drinking coffee, or to REI and have a rock-climbing experience. But here, you can get on a horse and go to 11,500 feet and have a true experience.”
Timmins said she also knows, though, that for many ranches the work and cost involved make selling out to a developer attractive.
“It’s a turning point for some of these guest ranches,” she said.
“A lot of them have been in the family for generations, but the new generation is realizing how hard it is to work every day 18 hours a day. The third and fourth generations are saying, ‘We’re out.’ So it’s kind of a dying business, where people have either sold out to private retreats and families, or are developing the land.”
When the couple bought Rawah Guest Ranch, they embarked on a flurry of renovation and redecoration.
“Everything was stripped, from linens to mattresses,” Melanie said. “The cabins are still rustic, but when people are done hiking, they can get into a nice shower with granite countertops.”
At the Bar Lazy J in Parshall, the “spa ride” — part of its weekly package — is particularly popular, a trek on horseback to the Hot Sulphur Springs Resort & Spa, where dude-ranchers can soak in the hot mineral springs or book a massage.
On a recent Friday, a group of guests dismounted their horses across from the Hot Sulphur Springs Spa after lunch in nearby Byers Canyon. Their swimsuits were stashed in the waiting van.
“I brought stuff to spa, but I don’t know whether to stay and spa or go home and spa,” says one man, face shaded from the blazing sun by his cowboy hat.
At Bar Lazy J, where the word spa so easily becomes a verb, the onsite masseuse is swamped with business.
“If someone told me that I’d be having a masseuse on board and that the swimming pool would be the focal point of the ranch and that people would be doing rides to soak in the hot spa, that’s not the kind of ranch I’d want to buy,” said co-owner Jerry Helmicki. “But that’s what the guests want, so we offer it.”
Over at the Laramie River Dude Ranch, co-owner Bill Burleigh closely monitors these developments.
“People are looking for amenities that they didn’t have before, like improved food,” he said. “People used to associate steak and beans with the dude ranch, but now they’re looking for vegetables and alternatives.”
At Sylvan Dale, during a recent lunch, there were four choices of pizza: meat, cheese, vegetarian and bruschetta. Guests snatched up the trendy Italian bruschetta first and fast, leaving an empty pan.
That same week, at Bar Lazy J, Angela and Martin Reilly, visiting from England, soaked in the hot springs after the spa ride, reflecting back upon the week’s journeys into mountains and through valleys, clip-clopping through pine forests that smelled like a field of Christmas trees.
And they lavished praise on a luxury that those old cowboys never knew.
“It’s nice to come back from a ride and get into the hot tub with a beer,” Angela said. “It’s essential before dinner.”
Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083 or coconnor@denverpost.com
More profitable to sell
Land prices can make selling a dude ranch more profitable than running one, causing some owners to sell the land to developers or private interests.
• In 2005, former eBay president Meg Whitman paid $20 million for the 150-acre Skyline Guest Ranch near Telluride — buying it from owners exhausted after running a dude ranch for decades — and turned it into a private residence.
• Peaceful Valley Guest Ranch near Lyons, now on the market, is receiving many offers from nonprofits.
• The Elkhorn Lodge & Guest Ranch in Estes Park, which bills itself as “the only remaining guest ranch of the 1870s era,” is for sale. “We’re getting old, putting in more money every year, and never made a profit,” said owner Jerry Zahourek, who wants to sell to developers.
• Beaver Meadows Resort Ranch in Red Feather Lakes is also for sale, a package that includes both guest ranch and zoning that allows for residential and institutional development, such as schools and churches.
• The C Lazy U Guest Ranch at Granby is selling $1 million homesteads in a private gated community, complete with dude ranch memberships.
Finding a good match
There are now three types of dude ranches, and it’s important to know the nuances before you make a selection.
• Working dude ranches have sheep and cattle operations that allow you to work with livestock, from doctoring to driving.
• Dude ranches, where horseback riding is the core focus.
• Resort dude ranches, where horseback riding is one of many activities, such as rock climbing and mountain biking.
To find a dude ranch in Colorado that suits your particular needs, check out the choices at the website of the Colorado Dude Ranch Association: .
Another good resource is the website of the Dude Ranchers’ Association, which offers a national list of its more than 100 members: duderanch.org.
Prices range from less than $1,100 to more than $1,800 per week per adult, double occupancy.
Colleen O’Connor
