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Birth Pangs of "Dude Business"
told by wife Early Wrangler
Present Day Comforts were Lacking but
Rugged Western Hospitality Was Abundant
Far Cry from Conditions of 1934
By Mrs. EOA C. BROWN
Only an unrecognized and dwindling minority of present-day residents of the Buffalo Bill Dude Ranch country can turn an inward eye back to the necessary thirty-forty years, t call into being the frontier land that gave birth to the present day buxom and flourishing "Dude Business."
A pity I can't vision it for you as it recurs to me!
A few and universally known old time ranches were scattered from hell to breakfast over a vast area connected by almost impassible roads that wandered in serpentine inconsequence around natural barriers, seeking the level of least resistance, fording creeks and rivers in high water and low and disregarding all rocks and gullies that a stout, springless lumber wagon could be hauled over or through.
No fences or gates interfered with freedom of transit or the fancy of the drier Every man carried a six gun on one hip, a bottle on the other and a warm and hearty welcome in each fist for the rare and infrequent stranger.
The small log houses were shingled with dirt through which the mud flowed in unquenchable rivulets during the Spring season of melting snows and revived through chilly rains.
Talk about the "gold old times!" So they were – the romantic, colorful times of the survival of the fittest; when only the lone wolves and bear cubs of the human race were sturdy enough to bare their teeth in the face of Privation or Destitution and bend conditions to their service!
But in spite of the dirt roof often leaking, of the dirt floor always carefully wetted down to keep the dust from rising to obliterate and suffocate the inmates, the home-made bunks were wide enough for any number of visitors and gurb-line riders; and an abundance of wild game, fish, potatoes (and often little else!) sustained the frontier reputation for hospitality. It was against frontier etiquette to inquire a man's business or where he came from, but aside from this, there were few conventions or formalities.
When it came to outfitting for a hunting trip, a dude was treated as well as themselves. No worse, no better. A good tent and cowboy bed of sour and heavy "sogans"' a frying pan and dutch-oven with a few rusty tin dishes; a sack of beans, some flour, coffee, sugar and salt and, if the tenderfoot looked like a mammy's boy who needed petting, a sack of potatoes might be added, though, an one oldy timer truthfully remarked: "potatoes are 80 per cent water and there isn't a damned bit of sense in packing water out there where the rivers are full of it."
The dude ranch business really began a vague outline when women started to accompany their husbands bands west, either to hunt or to stay at the ranches until the hunt was concluded. It then became evident even to the most hard-boiled and conservative rancher that a little more in the way of comfort was a necessity for such profitable guests. And comforts came. Slowly, at first, then more and more rapidly. Cabins were enlarged or built separately; "store" furniture appeared a piece at a time. (I still own and cherish the first rocking chair that bumped, atop a load of provisions, over the South Fork trail. Alas, it retains but a shadow of it's former glory as even the cowhide seat and back that replaced the original cane seat and back, has given way to modern imitation leather.)
Rivers were bridged, roads somewhat smoothed and barbed wire fenced out the freedom and happy privations of an earlier period. School M'ams appeared, to settle down in the light of some sourdough's fireside to raise the young, progressive dude wranglers of today.
Progress in growth, in methods and results cannot be denied but it must be admitted that much of the west. Progress in growth, in methods and results cannot be denied but it must be admitted that much of the romance, the glamour and the joy of living that characterized dude wrangling thirty years ago, as disappeared, never to return.
Cody Enterprise American Legion Special
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Come Ride 
