Viewers of films and television shows might imagine the dude ranch as something not quite legitimate, a place where city dwellers pretend to be cowboys in amusingly inauthentic fashion. But the tradition of the dude ranch, America’s original western vacation, is much more interesting and deeply connected with the culture and history of the American West. In American Dude Ranch, Lynn Downey opens new perspectives on this buckaroo getaway, with all its implications for deciphering the American imagination. Dude ranching began in the 1880s when cattle ranches ruled the West. Men, and a few women, left the comforts of their eastern lives to experience the world of the cowboy. But by the end of the century, the cattleman’s West was fading, and many ranchers turned to wrangling dudes instead of livestock. What began as a way for ranching to survive became a new industry, and as the twentieth century progressed, the dude ranch wove its way into American life and culture. Wyoming dude ranches hosted silent picture shoots, superstars such as Gene Autry were featured in dude film plots, fashion designers and companies like Levi Strauss & Co. replicated the films’ western styles, and novelists Zane Grey and Mary Roberts Rinehart moved dude ranching into popular literature. Downey follows dude ranching across the years, tracing its influence on everything from clothing to cooking and showing how ranchers adapted to changing times and vacation trends. Her book also offers a rare look at women’s place in this story, as they found personal and professional satisfaction in running their own dude ranches. However contested and complicated, western history is one of America’s national origin stories that we turn to in times of cultural upheaval. Dude ranches provide a tangible link from the real to the imagined past, and their persistence and popularity demonstrate how significant this link remains. This book tells their story—in all its familiar, eccentric, and often surprising detail.

Dude ranches were Arizona's first destination vacation. The earliest were built on working cattle ranches, stage stops, mining claims, and homesteads. Early dudes were typically wealthy and stayed for a long time, some for so long that one ranch had a school for its guests' children. Dude ranches were built around unspoiled country and offered spectacular views, "healthy" weather, and the chance to experience the cowboy life. Hollywood filmmakers came and, with them, some of the biggest figures of their time. Among those who were guests at dude ranches were John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Dean Martin, Tom Hanks, Walt Disney, and US presidents.

A pictorial celebration of New Mexico's history and landscape. In celebration of New Mexico's statehood centenial, Richard Melzer focuses on the various social and political elements that have made the Land of Enchantment what it is today. Filled with images that document the past hundred years, New Mexico is a photographic delight accompanied by brief insightful essays that leave the reader in no doubt of a history that is both imposing and exciting in its scope. This book is also an official product of the state's centennial celebration. Richard Anthony Melzer is a professor of history at the University of New Mexico Valencia Campus. He is a former president of the Historical Society of New Mexico and is the author of many books and articles on twentieth-century New Mexico history.

The history of Faraway Ranch and the Erickson-Riggs family is a rich and complex story. However, if viewed simplistically as we often have, the Faraway Ranch story is one more tale of Western settlement. Two Swedidh immigrants, one a soldier and the other an officer's family servant, meet at a frontier military post, fall in love and decide to homestead along the banks of Bonita Creek in the Chiricahua Mountains.... (from the introduction).

Coronado National Memorial explores forgotten pathways through Montezuma Canyon in southeastern Arizona, and provides an essential history of the southern Huachuca Mountains. This is a magical place that shaped the region and two countries, the United States and Mexico. Its history dates back to the expedition led by Conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in 1540, a mere forty-eight years after Columbus’ first voyage. Before that time Native Americans occupied the land, later to be joined by Spanish and Mexican period miners and ranchers, prospecting entrepreneurs, missionaries, and homesteaders. Sánchez is the foremost historian of the area, and he shifts through and decodes a number of key Spanish and English language documents from different archives that tell the story of an historical drama of epic proportions. He combines the regional and the global, starting with the prehistory of the area. He covers Spanish colonial contact, settlement missions, the Mexican Territorial period, land grants, and the ultimate formation of the international border that set the stage for the creation of the Coronado National Memorial in 1952. Much has been written about southwestern Arizona and northeastern Sonora, and in many ways this book complements those efforts and delivers details about the region’s colorful past.