Funding was provided by The Wyoming PBS Television Production Endowment and The Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund Out where the sun is a little brighter.

Where the snows that fall are lighter.

Where the bonds of home are tighter.

That's where the west begins.

In valleys carved by wind and time, it's the end of winter.

And the gates of the dude ranch open once more.

These are working ranches.

Yet soon, will welcome strangers from the cities.

Guests who come not just to be pampered, but for connection.

To family.

In a world driven by technology the dude ranch remains a place that doesn't change.

Across seven ranches through a cycle of a single year.

We'll see the beauty of tradition and ask, what calls us to the West?

Why would we leave all we know and set our face to the horizon?

And is there hope that the younger generations will answer that call?

We raise Appaloosa horses.

We raise our horses in probably the most natural way that you could raise horses They live out on pasture and graze year-round and they're just kind of out in the elements and that makes a pretty hardy tough animal that can survive in these mountains.

Roundup for us is a yearly tradition.

It's something that our family has done for decades.

These horses haven't been ridden in nine months.

They have to ease back into it.

The horses definitely know that this is happening today.

I mean, they know that it's Roundup It's time to go up to the ranch and be part of the summer.

I think everybody's ready.

There's so much energy amongst the riders too because it's our Wranglers first time or maybe second time, getting on our horses.

It's definitely dusting off the cobwebs and seeing what you're made of.

The process is moving the horses from this winter pasture to the ranch which is about 75 miles in distance.

We're essentially trying to move 130 head of horses and 15 plus riders but they're all kind of one big amoeba that is moving across the landscape.

It's certainly not the most necessary thing in terms of moving the horses.

The most efficient way would just be loading them on trucks and trailers but we're kind of holding to the old traditions and just trying to keep it as traditional as it would've been.

Roundups are a rite of passage, and signify renewal for ranches across the west.

It's spring.

The snows recede and the horses are brought home from their winter locations.

At Eatons' Ranch near Sheridan, Wyoming the tradition runs deep.

For generations, the town of Sheridan has joined in the roundup.

Neighbors riding side by side with ranch hands.

Even city slickers are invited along.

I'm Nate Schmeiser.

I'm the horseshoer and corral boss at Eatons'.

And I'm Mary Eaton.

I help manage Eatons' Ranch.

We have close to 200 head of horses here at Eatons'.

It takes a lot of horses for us to get through a season.

I don't know for sure how long the ranch has done the spring trip, I've done it I think this was my 19th or 20th trip.

Our horses are turned out for eight months out of the year and we trail them home.

It sort of kicks off the summer for us, obviously but it grows every year.

It seems like when we come through town it's a few more people and town gets a little longer.

It just so happens to get from the winter pasture to Wolf where we are now the best way is to come in on Fifth Street which is a major thoroughfare through Sheridan.

But over time it became popular with the local tourism bureau and now it's advertised and the community turns out really a couple thousand people and you have a escort by the sheriff and the train stop and it's really exciting.

I've had the same crew pretty much for the most part for the last probably 10 or 12 years You don't really know somebody till you've trotted a hundred miles with them because there is no getting away from one another, right?

Like you're stuck there.

Aside from starting the summer off for the dude ranch it's a nice group of guys I get to hang out with and trail home for a few days.

Soon, the gates will open and the long summer will begin.

The days of work run sun up to sundown and won't let up until the seasons end.

The work is hard and it will never make them rich.

They keep at it because they love the life and the bond it gives them with each other.

I grew up here on the ranch and I loved my childhood and it was one of the best experiences.

Saddles need to go up there.

Keep your horses.

You wanna just put your horse right on the trailer.

This guy this guy can still go And now having maybe a little more well-rounded outlook on life I can, you know, see how special this lifestyle is.

That's why we do it.

If you look at the values that the dude ranch business represent it's something that I pass on to my kids and my grandkids.

You will have to spend a lot of your life doing what you have to do so that you can spend some of it doing what you want to do.

So tip the scales in that direction.

I mean, I know here these young people get up at five six o'clock in the morning and they're still going at eight or nine o'clock at night.

That's an industry.

That's our industry.

Those are our work ethics.

Dude ranchers, you know, you get a hundred dude ranchers you get 102 opinions on what it is that's a dude ranch.

It's obviously horse-centered.

It's going to be on or accessing beautiful, unspoiled large amounts of land, country, whether it's public or private.

It doesn't matter.

They're getting out and seeing this beautiful part of wherever that ranch is.

That's non-negotiable.

White Stallion is one of those ranches where the city's grown up toward it.

And yet because of our parents' foresight and sacrifice, struggle they put together 3000 acres and that is candidly why we're still here.

We moved here as a family in March of 1966 so we're going to be at 60 years here very soon.

We came in 1965.

I was five years old at the time My father was in the oil business.

My mother was in the oil business and they were tired of that and they were tired of the weather in Denver, Colorado and they wanted to move to Arizona.

So they did impetuously.

This ranch was a very different ranch when I was a little kid.

You know, it was pretty much traditional dude ranching riding, eating, sleeping.

Arizona alone at 338 dude ranches in in one time or another.

And the fact that our parents sacrificed struggled, dedicated their entire lives preserving it so dude ranching could flourish here and that their mountains and their country looked a hundred years after they were here the way it looked 100 years before they came.

I don't think there's ever been a moment I took this for granted.

My brother and I, as partners here we agree the ranch is the boss.

And that means that what's best for the ranch is what makes our decision.

We've got to get a lot of things right.

How are we all doing this morning?

Good!

We got everybody?

Alright, let's see I'm going to go through a few introductions.

My name is Kameron.

I met most of you last night.

And as far as our wrangling staff it'll be taking you guys out on the rides.

We're always available to answer questions.

All right.

I'm going to do a quick mounting and dismounting demonstration.

First thing you should do is put the reins in your hand.

This is how you control your horse.

So it should be in your hand while you're mounting, dismounting.

There are guests who have come here and are riding for the first time.

They might be terrified.

Might need to take a couple hops to get your momentum.

And in one motion step completely up and over and into the saddle.

To get the horse to go you're going to give him his head and then give him a bump with his heels and they're going to step forward.

To stop, you're going to pull back and then- When we introduce them to their horses and they start the program a lot of them are very apprehensive.

A lot of them have never touched a horse.

We have kids that have never touched a dog.

So you're going to put me on this great big thing and tell me it's going to be okay?

What if it's not?

That's our job is try to teach them and keep them safe at the same time.

There you go.

Good job.

How was it?

All right.

Hold on to those.

That's how you control your horses.

They're big animals, so they're overwhelming to start with.

Squeeze your heels and kick them.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, we're going.

There you go.

Turn them around.

There you go.

Turn them that way.

How you feeling?

Alrighty.

Definitely not an expert.

I would call it a beginner because it's been years since I've ridden.

Just like to see the kids experience something different.

It's not about riding and maybe the kid will go home and never ride again and maybe they don't like horses and they like bikes and good for them.

If they overcome their fears I tell kids you can't be brave unless you were first scared otherwise you're just fearless.

If we can get them to overcome it and then we get to see them, oh my gosh I turn right.

The horse turns right.

They turn left.

I pulled, they stop.

I went fast.

Oh my God.

This little guy was afraid.

I was.

He didn't want to go.

Because I was afraid of heights.

I was really proud of him.

I was really proud of him for doing it because he tends to be a little he holds back a little bit but this is a big world.

We have to try to expose our kids to that.

Don't we?

All yours.

Good job.

Great job.

Are you ready?

They have a chance to experience real life and real nature and anybody that spends any time in nature is changed.

There's all these first-timers and in between.

They didn't even expect the connection that they're going to have with the horse and how the horse just intrinsically affects their experience.

Definitely the scenery.

That's what I enjoy most about riding.

The scenery and just take in places you probably wouldn't see driving in a car.

Well, they always say the outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man.

And I think it still holds true, I think.

Something about riding and seeing the country and you're on a horse, not just a machine and it's altogether different, I think.

There's something about being out in nature.

The guests don't understand it until they go.

I mean there is therapy in a horse but there is also therapy to be outside and just hearing the wind, listening to a bird listening to the stream run by.

It's just something special, being on a horse being on the trail.

Everything slows down a little bit.

You can fully soak in not only the sights but you're experiencing the movement of the horse underneath you crossing rivers, crossing stream and having just a little bit of that taste of the original settlers that came out here.

The west was full of promise full of excitement, full of adventure.

So the folks back east that had money that had the wherewithal wanted to come and experience that.

And I don't think dude ranches get enough credit for forming and shaping the west.

It all started at the Custer Trail Ranch in the Dakota territory with the Eatons.

They came and stayed and never left and they became part of the west and they ended up shaping the west.

Well, the Eatons' family is from Pittsburgh.

They were a prominent family in the retail business.

They had four sons one of whom was an adventurer at heart.

Howard Eaton came out in 1879 from Pittsburgh to Medora, North Dakota.

His two brothers, Alden and Willis, soon followed.

And in the custom of the day, they homesteaded a ranch in Medora a cattle ranch.

Teddy Roosevelt actually became a very good friend of theirs and actually inspired him to buy ranch neighboring them.

Howard was like his big brother and showed him the ropes and they became lifelong friends and course, Teddy went back to his political career but they still kept in touch all through their lives.

But the Eatons continued to do a variety of things including starting to host friends from Pittsburgh that showed up.

Western ethic of hospitality, we welcome all who come.

It's essential.

It's a core belief.

And as folks were traveling through they might just need help.

Things like watering their horses or a place to stay or a hot meal.

And so folks would open their homes just to help them out.

Because you had to feed anybody who stopped by.

You didn't turn anyone away.

Kind of the code of the West.

To be hospitable to whoever stopped by, travelers whether you knew them or not.

But they could stay as long as they wanted.

Without charge.

The Eatons said, "Oh, you can't pay us because that's how we are."

because that's what they believed.

The guests came up with the idea and said, "Oh, well, I want to pay you."

And they said, "Well, hey, what a concept."

Because they wouldn't just come for a week.

They would come for a month and then they would bring their families and then they would bring their sisters and their brothers, and their cousins because it was just such a great experience.

The horse and the cattle business is boom and bust.

And one reason the Eatons and other ranchers would take in guests is it's a source of revenue to get them through the hard times.

It was a value.

They could let four people stay with them on the ranch for the summer and they made as much as selling 10 cows.

That was unreal.

And that was the beginning of the dude ranch industry in America.

Where did the word dude come in?

The word dude, it goes they're different stories.

It goes back to the eastern slang.

Certainly in the early days that was somebody that was unfamiliar with the West.

A dude is someone who's unaccustomed to the traditions and activities of a place.

I could be a dude in New York City.

A dude is a person who is getting started with horses.

I don't even know.

Wasn't it about their duds or their clothes or something?

I don't - I honestly don't know.

I've never looked up the term.

We think of a dude as a guest we put on a horse.

Dude was a term that actually started back It was an old English word and it started with duds.

Really, if you look a lot of the old black and white pictures they dress to the nines.

The dude was a guy who would show up in the fanciest garb and that is what some of these people do.

And so that's hence the dude.

And that fit pretty well perfectly for dude ranches because when people would come out to these ranches, of course they have to have the finest hat and the finest boots and jeans.

And they went and bought a whole new wardrobe to come to the ranch.

People still do it to this day.

That now, the term dude and guest are interchangeable.

For dude ranch, guest ranch I mean, and even your dudes or your guests.

You'll hear a lot of the older generations still refer to them as dudes.

Really they took that kind of dude term and advertised it very well and then ran with it.

Turn of the century, 1904.

Wyoming had only been a state about 14 years.

Howard came here and found this place here at the base of the Big Horn Mountains and filed on it, and we've been acquiring land around here approximately got about 7,000 acres and been here ever since.

And they came here lock, stock and barrel and they made this ranch and they had a thriving dude business.

What they did recognize is that people would be willing to pay you to just stay there and go hunting or go into the park or take them on horseback rides.

So it was happening around up Yellowstone.

It was happening out in Colorado and other places.

So kind of all at the same time people were recognizing that people wanted to seek the outdoors.

Many of the dude ranchers were actually dudes at some point that came out and purchased a ranch.

Hello, Chawami.

Saying hi.

There was a fascination an allure of coming out and just wanting to see more of the west rather than the city of Detroit where I grew up.

I had a great career I had a wonderful job and many promotions but I was burned out by the time I hit my early 40s.

And so there became an opportunity later in life for this to happen and we both talked about it and decided to make it happen.

So we cashed everything in, 401ks, everything.

Paid huge penalties, did all that.

We'd just say "Oh, that's floating in the Colorado River out there."

This is a photo that we had taken to make an announcement to all of our family and friends that this is what we were going to do.

This is a history wall about the Bar Lazy Jay and the original owners Edgar Messiter, James and Elizabeth Ferguson.

They came here and bought the place in 1904 from England and with their idea to have some type of a guest facility.

Originally, this is the main lodge and these were canvas and wood tents along the Colorado River and that's how they first started.

This is the original building we're in right here and this is 1904.

This was the original dining area.

Over the course of the next several years many of these items with the ownership changes disappeared.

And so we were very cognizant of trying to bring back the look and what they were after and continuing with the authenticity.

Well these buildings are all over a hundred years old so there was a lot we had to do.

It's a lot of infrastructure work.

We really worked hard to create the warmth that Western style.

None of that was here.

And restoring things.

Every single dresser on the ranch all the antiques, everything.

We had custom-made beds in all of our cabins.

I've seen that ranch before they were there and it was pretty tired.

And I saw it a few years ago.

And when you walk on that dude ranch there is no pretense to anything other than being a tuned up beautiful testament to dude ranch history.

I think we represented what started dude ranching a long time ago.

It was all our money.

It was what we had earned in our previous life to do this.

We had to work hard for what we achieved.

So now you're part of our ranch family.

And you go home and tell your friends.

They did not believe we were doing this.

Our goal was to not have a vacation for our guests but to have an experience.

So we challenge our guests to step back to a simpler time and that's becoming harder and harder.

Pull back.

Look.

Go.

Yay!

When we first bought the ranch, there was no signals down here.

There was no internet.

There was nothing.

Well, that's all changing now.

Come all this way to do something different and their playing basketball.

I know, right?

We broke down and we put the internet jailhouse in here so we provide a spot where they can do those kinds of things.

In fact, Cheri sings a little song - to the guests first night.

- I do I sing a little song.

Oh, give me a zone where there ain't no cell phones.

And the signal is way out of range where the only tweet heard is a sound of a bird and the internet is down all day.

If you get caught on your phone.

Cheri will take it away and then make you sing to get it back.

People are pretty easy to predict You know Sunday evening they check in and they're looking and like "What the heck's going on with on with this?".

When people get out of the car they want to know the wifi password.

The disconnection is harder and harder to achieve.

We have families who phone who their number one question is if we have really good internet because their son is only going to play video games.

They live here in Tucson and my husband and I come to visit with them and every time we come they're like hooked on those phones and iPads and it drives me crazy.

I can't stand it.

That's why we can't, to just try something new.

The younger generation a lot of kids kind of like Oh, you know they don't want to really put their phone down.

But it's so funny.

I think that's one of the best things.

Sometimesthey're here for two three days.

And boy, about that third or fourth day, they're like.

Okay.

I think there's an initial fear of what life's going to be like for a week without constant access to the internet.

And I think they quickly learn that there's so much to do outside and that the kids have the freedom to just walk out the door and go play with other kids to be outside.

By the end of the week sometimes the parents are not sure where their kids are at and stuff.

But that's the nice part, the safety part about it too.

Families that come from big cities and most really anywhere anymore.

Their kids don't have freedom to do anything.

And you see that when they arrive on Sunday, they're still following their kids around and.

By Wednesday it's like I'll be checking by lunchtime.

And there's a freedom that the kids have that in a lot of areas in the world it is lost.

Kids are the main reasons families come to the ranch.

It's the kids that bring them back.

Horses were made for kids.

Horses will get them over, through and around stuff that kids can't get around.

And kids like to be able to command particularly something that big.

A horse and a kid is it's a great thing because the kid gets to depend on the horse and trust the horse.

And the horse kind of does the same thing to the kid.

Seeing Grand Teton National Park seeing it from a horse you're actually seeing it.

You can enjoy it up close.

Horseback riding you might say, made this country The United States.

It is such a special place where kids get to be kids and they have autonomy in a way that's so special.

One of the things that we still see is when people first arrive their appetites are different, their attitude is different.

By day three they start to come down and they start to relate to what's around them but they become a part of what's there because that's really why they're there.

A lot of people are burned out.

They just don't know it and they need to slow down.

They need to unplug and that's not something that comes to their mind instantaneously.

and that's not something that comes to their mind instantaneously.

For me, we spend all day, every day, all week in the city.

So getting away from the city life the hustle and bustle and just coming out and connecting to nature.

That is a real vacation.

Yeah.

I don't know a better place to do it than this.

I'm an emergency room doctor.

Work in the basement of a hospital.

Don't get to see the outside so when I get a chance to go onto nature certainly that's going to be the thing I'd like to do.

There you go.

Perfect.

Heck yeah dude.

Just bring them up.

Especially here where we're out with millions of acres essentially of pristine land.

I think the reason people don't realize what they need before they get to a dude ranch is because they just haven't had time to shut down enough to to really think about what they need.

It grounds them to the land.

It grounds them to each other.

And it puts all the other noise away for a week.

My view of dude ranching is I have this home.

My wife and I and my kids and my staff are opening up our home to you.

That's the feeling that a dude ranch gives you as a family.

Morning.

Would you like pancake?

Okay.

One of our parents' mantras was make everything seem like nothing's happening at all.

If you're trying to get breakfast ready do it calmly, do it behind the scenes.

- Good, how are you?

- Good.

- You want two?

People should just show up and go "Wow, look, breakfast.

Who knew?"

"Oh, look the horses are saddled.

They must've saddle themselves."

Everything should just happen like it's seamless and effortless.

You have to have a good business mind number one or you won't succeed.

You have to like people.

And more than anything you have to want them to feel like they're coming to your home because that's what it is.

It's like having a hundred house guests for six months.

That in itself is a challenge but you have to have authenticity to make a real dude ranch because it's not a commercial business and you're not really operating it for the bottom line At least we don't.

Running a guest ranch is a lot of work and you basically have no life during your operating season and we do that from the middle of May to the middle of September.

So you really have no private life per se during that period of time.

You have to be able to do everything.

Everybody in our family could do every one of the jobs.

There isn't one single job on this ranch that we won't or at some level can't do.

We know how to cook.

We know how to wrangle.

We can shoe horses.

If our staff are doing it we're willing to do it and we're able to do it.

And frankly at times happy to do it.

If you have any dietary restrictions or concerns or anything you'd like to let them know please take this opportunity... It's like when people say "Well I'm head of HR" or whatever I'm head of HR.

I'm head of the cabins.

I'm head of the kitchen."

You don't have just one job.

And you make it look simple but it's very difficult.

It's a way of life.

It's not a way to make a million bucks.

If you talk to your accountant a dude ranch is definitely not the highest and best use of the property.

And so it's got to be a labor of love.

It's got to be because you get to impact these families and these kids that's what fills our tanks just the impact you've had on them and their families.

For many guests those first days on a dude ranch reveal how much they needed to slow down.

They find it quiet they didn't know they were missing but the West has always needed help to be found.

And just as it was in the earliest days ranchers faced the same question their predecessors did.

How do you show people they need a place they never imagined?

How do you call people West?

I would say that the peak of dude ranching was probably post-World War II in the 1940s, 50s.

At some point in time there were 1,500 dude ranches in the West.

As the economy was growing and America was building a lot of these outdoor recreational businesses started to form and take hold and really that's where it kind of blossomed.

Flathead Lake Lodge goes back to 1945 when my father started it and the buildings were built in 1932 after the Depression.

My father came back after the war, he flew bombers, B-17s B-29s, B-25s during the war.

And when he came back to his hometown he bushwhacked over to this side of the lake and found the buildings all overgrown and had the idea of a hunting fishing lodge.

My dad purchased the lake frontage first at a very little cost.

It was big money back then.

It was a very meager beginning and high school education and knew nothing much about business.

It slowly evolved into a family vacation.

We are definitely unique being on a lake.

Flathead Lake it's 9 miles across right where we are and 30 miles long and it's the largest natural freshwater lake west of Mississippi.

The ranch today is large enough that we pretty much operate all on our own property and it's expanded into one of the larger dude ranches in the country.

And Maureen and I ran it for 45 years now it's passed to the third generation my son, Chase and Kate and away we go again.

The fact that we can continue what his dad worked on for 40 years and what his grandfather started it's an honor to be able to just continue it.

This is the ranch probably in the late 50s, somewhere in there.

They just put the airstrip in my grandfather flew and had a lot of friends that flew.

My dad bought this ranch in 1946.

Howard Kelsey was his name.

He had gone to war in Europe and prior to the war my father was working for John Deere.

With Howard's time in the war he was part of the John Deere battalion which is why we have the John Deere green accents around the ranch.

Howard was very dynamic.

He commanded a room when he walked in.

He knew he was coming.

I mean he walked in, he was 6'2" and wore a cowboy hat real nicely Kameron looks like him down to the dimples.

Howard didn't come from horses and cowboys but he certainly picked it up and learned it.

Training horses.

Here, what are they oh, they're shoeing horses.

Here, I mean, there's my grandfather there you know sitting around the lodge.

I mean, it's the same table that's sitting right there.

Yeah.

He was really a big promoter of not only the ranch but of Montana in general.

My grandfather's idea was a centennial train which was celebrating the territory of Montana.

And so it was in 1964, I believe.

They ended up with a 25-car train that toured the nation went to 14 different stops.

Washington, DC Chicago, Philadelphia.

I was on the train as a young man.

I was 13.

Would stop along the way and have a traveling roadshow of billboards of Montana and horses and trying to get more tourism brought out to the state I was nine at the time and I can still remember the train coming into our town and everybody was wearing prairie dresses and bonnets and all the men my dad everybody grew beards and it was a big deal.

Well, these murals were on the centennial train when it went back to New York City.

One person is going to go out and get that cow.

The second person is going to stay in the middle make sure the wrong cow does not go in.

Or make sure none of the cows go out.

And once that cow crosses, you guys are switching positions.

It's a timed event too, so hopefully you guys are competitive.

So I've been on a horse a couple of times in the past, but nothing like this.

White cow far left.

All right.

Brown cow, far right.

Stay on 'em.

Excellent.

There's never been a time maybe it'll be worse 10 years from now but there's never been a time in our history that people need what Dude Ranches give them as much as they do today.

Dude ranching it's had its ups and downs in terms of popularity but one of our goals is to keep dude ranching viable and we think that's our little tiny corner of the world is something that's important to do.

There was a time when heading west was one of the few ways a family could get away.

The open road promised freedom or at least the idea of it.

Now there are endless choices.

It isn't easy to convince people that the West can still offer something they can find elsewhere.

For dude ranches and for the industry there's a lot of challenges.

I mean honestly it's looking kind of down the barrel at us in the next hundred years is I think, the relevancy of battling out the big money people.

Places like Disney cruise lines, Europe to be able to keep dude ranches and the idea of it in front of people.

Especially when you can take a cruise all-inclusive cruise for 800 bucks or whatever it is.

I mean, you look at what it costs to go to a dude ranch and especially on a smaller ranch.

It has to make a lot of money and you've got to stay full in a concentrated timeframe.

And then the more you charge then the less there are of people out there who can afford to do that or want to do that.

I think this business is also cyclical.

It goes into a kind of a quiet time when people decide to do all the Disney stuff and the islands and stuff.

And then a lot of times movies will change it.

For us, it was City Slickers.

When City Slickers came out you couldn't have jump-started dude ranching more.

I mean, it shot us right through the ceiling City Slickers for our industry just made people realize that the West existed and that there was an opportunity to come and experience the West.

What we do is not anything like that.

We don't chase cattle across rivers.

If we did, we would kill people.

City Slickers came along.

Everybody wanted to go to a dude ranch.

And so we had did pretty darn well the first year because of Billy Crystal in that little movie.

So we're indebted to him forever.

And we rode the fishing one.

River runs through it.

So about every few years they do something that really promotes this kind of life and we ride that wave for a while.

Kameron and Sally have run Yellowstone.

That's just run them for the 5 or 6 years.

I mean, a lot of guests do come here because they've seen the show.

Hey, Tom, bring them down.

It's Hollywood entertainment.

I think there's elements that that are true.

Now, are we having AR-15 gunfights in downtown Bozeman?

No, like that's ridiculous.

Before, I think that the businesses were struggling.

I mean dude ranches were trying to find their niche again but I think that now everyone kind of wants to be a cowboy again.

It's cool again.

Exactly.

Yeah, they'll make it easy for him to turn the right way.

Do it when you ask.

A lot of the ranches that are owned by dude ranchers are sitting on very expensive property The kids a lot of them are thinking "This was not my dream.

This was mom and dad's dream or this was grandma and grandpa's dream.

This isn't my dream.

Well I could sell this and live very comfortably."

You walk around these cabins you see the old pictures.

There's very few places like this anymore.

And if they are they're being bought up and subdivided.

With real estate prices going through the roof our neighboring ranch down the road is up for sale again for a whopping 60 million.

I think it's just harder and harder for people who have had this lifestyle to maintain the energy and the money to continue it for generations.

I hope I'm wrong.

People ask me all the time "Do you have a succession plan?"

I have two adult sons I'm the older father of a seven-year-old daughter.

So does that mean my kids are going to take it?

Who knows?

That's up to them and I would never wish this on anybody who didn't want to do it.

So what I hope is that the ranch is the boss and the ranch will succeed and go forward whether it's one of us or somebody else.

Yeah, you see, I've never, never married, don't have a family so that was part of the problem with me.

What the hell are you going to do with it?

So I finally decided I think 40 years is enough.

I think I'll put it up for sale and broke my heart, but we did.

That's hard.

There's very few family-owned ranches left which is really sad.

With our family, the idea was that it's a one family business and if one family member wants to run it, then they can run it.

And fortunately for me my siblings didn't want to be a part of the ranch and I did.

I never really thought of doing anything else.

I think my epitaph is going to say he didn't screw up a great opportunity.

If there was another line, he was a successful dude rancher and that's harder than it seems.

If you look over the history of time in family businesses typically the third generation is the one that screws it up and I'm the third generation and I'll be damned if I'm going to be the one that screws it up.

Dude ranches have become popular again with families.

Maybe the reason is nostalgia for something that only existed in an old movie.

Or maybe it's a search for something the modern world left behind.

There's something elemental about it that still appeals to people in a very strong way and certainly I'm a poster child for that.

There's no place I'd rather be.

Probably been here 25, 30 times in the 40 years and I keep coming back because it's home.

I drive up that mile road and I see these red and white buildings and my heart is happy.

This place always feels so good to be here with the family.

We live in Germany.

You don't have this scenery.

You don't have this freedom.

We were like, "Why are you taking us out to Montana?

We don't want to go there."

And we came here one year and our whole family fell in love with it.

So we're like fourth generation coming here.

We just come, okay?

I'm able to come to a place like this and bring my whole family and they enjoy it.

Now I have my little grandkids here.

All we want to do is ride horses.

I always feel like everybody who grows up in the UK always wants to have a least one cowboy experience in their lifetime.

When you step off that highway get on the back of the horse and go ride these mountains.

Well, that heritage that Western heritage just blossoms through.

Because it is Americana.

The Western romance the Western culture is a big part of this country and it needs to survive and that's what dude ranches provide.

As long as we're still here and we show people that the West is still alive I think we're going to be good.

I know we're going to be good.

Thousands of visitors share in the same small town ritual.

The celebration of America's beginnings.

And there's a feeling that the founder's best ideas still live on out west.

Will a younger generation answer the call of the West?

Maybe they're just searching for something lasting.

A sense of continuity in a world that changes too fast.

Maybe the West was never just a place on a map, but an idea.

The spirit of the West endures not as a postcard but as a mirror showing us what America once was and what it still hopes to be.

It's an interesting question to think about legacy.

To me maybe legacy means how many people who have crossed your path have taken something with them.

And I think that becomes your legacy.