This Wyoming dude ranch is an iconic slice of Americana

Our three horses pick their way confidently along the edge of a red bluff lined in a riot of yellow aspen. I don’t worry about the 500-foot drop to the valley below; Darwin Ranch owner Oliver Klingenstein is leading the way on his white mare and ensures that his horses are experienced and that the guests riding them are well paired. Trusting my horse, I take in the scale of our Wyoming surroundings. Kinky Creek winds below, and the mountains of the Gros Ventre Wilderness spear the sky ahead. This morning, when my husband and I woke for a dawn hike with steam rising off the creek in the autumn chill, we were treated to a trio of moose browsing the willows, elk bugling, and a distant lone wolf howl.

It feels wild here, like it must have a century ago. And that’s intentional.

The Darwin Ranch is one of the birthplaces of dude ranching—an iconically American vacation to experience ranch life—in the West. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places and bears the distinction as one of the oldest, most remote working guest ranches in the country, with a history of family ownership.

Klingenstein’s family—who ranch in Cody, Wyoming—bought the Darwin 12 years ago after it had languished on the market. They determined it would not be the kind of luxe guest ranch that caters to millionaires, a category of vacation that’s become popular in part due to the runaway success of the television show Yellowstone.

Instead, they aimed for “rough, and comfortable at the same time,” says Kathy Bole, Klingenstein’s mother, adding that their guests feel “cared for, not pampered.”

“We still do the same things here that were happening a hundred years ago,” says Klingenstein. “We invite people to come here from a world away who can’t even begin to understand what the real, wide open, wild Western landscape is like. And through the simple acts of riding horses around it or walking in streams with a fishing pole, their minds are blown.”

The origins of dude ranching

Klingenstein is a wealth of knowledge on all things ranching, homesteading, and sustainability. The history of dude ranching in the American West is just as interesting as, and almost as long as, running cattle. “But it doesn’t really get the credit.”

Dude ranching traces its origins to the 1880s and the post-Civil War cattle boom—specifically to the Custer Trail Ranch in the Dakota Badlands, started by Howard Eaton and two of his brothers. The trio wrote letters to friends back East gushing about their new cowboy lifestyle. One of those letters was published in a New York newspaper, catching the eye of Theodore Roosevelt, who journeyed to visit Custer Trail.

Roosevelt fell so in love with the experience that he bought his own ranch nearby. His accounts of horseback riding, hunting, and fishing enthralled urbanites from the East Coast, and soon guests were flocking to the Eatons’ ranch, hungry to experience the open space of the American West.

Although it flew in the face of accepted Western hospitality, the brothers had to start charging nominal fees of their guests to cover food costs. It turned out that people were more than willing to pay to participate in ranch chores and horseback riding, a rugged lifestyle that was considered healthy mentally and physically. Thus, dude ranching was born. In those days, the word “dude” referred to a city slicker who knew nothing of rural life.

With the expansion of the railroad, combined with the dropping price of cattle, more ranchers entered the hospitality business. By 1926, more than 60 guest ranches in Wyoming and Montana, in addition to a scattering of ranches elsewhere, spurred the formation of the Dude Ranchers Association, which is celebrating its 100 birthday this year.

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History of the Darwin Ranch

The Darwin Ranch lies 25 miles up a rough dirt road that requires four-wheel-drive, and upon which cell service evaporates. The road sees exponentially more cattle than vehicles (and possibly more grizzly bears as well) thanks to being adjacent to the oldest intact cattle drive in the country where ranchers drive their cows to lower elevations for the winter. The Darwin occupies the kind of landscape in northwest Wyoming that, at 8,800 feet in elevation, is too harsh for cows, and so it was never a cattle ranch like some other historic dude ranches.

The road dips down into the Kinky Creek valley to a scattering of historic cabins, all built with timber from the surrounding hillsides. The original homestead on the Darwin is a tiny one-room cabin built in 1901 by Fred Dorwin (the ranch was later named Darwin thanks to a typo on a document), who made his living fur trapping and charging hunters to use his place as a hunting camp. At the time, it was an isolated inholding surrounded by U.S. Forest Service lands, and the Darwin remains one of the few homestead inholdings that’s survived subdivision to this day.

When Dorwin moved on, a couple from Michigan bought the homestead and developed it into a dude ranch with hunting and fishing. The first guests arrived in the 1920s.

By the time Klingenstein and Bole took charge of the Darwin, it consisted of six cabins and a main lodge, all of them at least 75 years old and most of them fallen into disrepair. Bole took charge of the repairs and bookings, and Klingenstein, just 20 years old at the time, took charge of the ranching operations, building up a herd of 30 horses.

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The Darwin today

Dorwin’s original homestead is now a charming nine-by-eleven-foot guest cabin, one of seven accommodations that guests can book, all of them carefully restored and made the rugged kind of cozy that seamlessly fits into this landscape. The Darwin is entirely off grid, with hydropower for electricity that is often interrupted by beavers working upstream, and wood stoves heating the century-old cabins.

Mornings here begin with the Darwin’s herd of horses streaming around the cabins on their way from one of the pastures back to the corral. Klingenstein began a rotational grazing system for his horses that’s resulted in twice as much grass growing on the range—just one aspect of his and Bole’s commitment to sustainability.

The family-style breakfast is made from scratch with ingredients sourced from within 100 miles, no small feat when a ranch is this remote. The bread is homemade, and Klingenstein’s father, who is conveniently a pilot, often makes drops of meat from the Cody ranch in his bush plane.

Most food is stored in a root cellar dug directly into the hillside, complete with hooks for hanging elk quarters when the Darwin transitions from summer guest ranching to fall hunting outfitting. And all the meals are outstanding thanks to Bole’s culinary school background.

No one is checking their phones during meals. Being off-grid means no internet, and Klingenstein and Bole refuse to get Starlink. Stays here are six days, and they want guests’ to be fully immersed and present in the place, the wild, and with the rest of the people here. It also means people are actually talking to each other, guests from from around the globe and across the political spectrum.

“Let me bear the burden of having to be connected,” says Klingenstein. “If there’s an emergency, I will get guests the help they need immediately. But they get to be disconnected from the outside world.” He considers it a gift in our era of constant connection.

What to do

There’s no set schedule here; horseback rides, fishing, and hiking are all available, but they’re not programmed. Guests are given their own freedom to determine their days, including just sitting on the porch and reading, if that's what they desire. 

My husband and I choose a full-day ride along with two other guests. We pack our sack lunches and meet at the corral, where Klingenstein and his wranglers select horses for us from his carefully curated herd. If guests want, they’re welcome to saddle and groom their horse, just like they’re welcome to tend their own fires in their cabins.

As we ride out, one of Klingenstein’s new fillies—he never puts guests on what he calls his “project horses”—spooks where she’s tied to a railing. He steps up to her calmly, walks around her, soothing her with his voice, hands, and calm presence. Later in the day, a wrangler leading our ride patiently coaxes a horse over a new bridge. Both are snapshots of the kind of quietly adept horsemanship that defines the experience here.

The ride itself is nothing short of remarkable. Part of it is off-trail, with the horses picking their way up a steep ridge. At the top is a panoramic view: the Tetons rising to the northwest, the Wind River range running along the eastern horizon, and undeveloped land in all directions.

Back at the ranch, I’m soaking sore muscles in the cedar wood-fired hot tub on the creek bank, with intermittent cold dips in Kinky, when I see Klingenstein and another guest galloping at full speed across the pasture. He’s looking back over his shoulder and grinning, apparently taking total joy in the fact that she’s clearly having the time of her life.

That’s what’s remarkable about Klingenstein and Bole. When they ask you at dinner—tonight it’s chimichurri steak from their ranch in Cody—how your day was, they truly want to know. They’re essentially sharing their home with their guests, and that’s exactly what the experience feels like.

Both acknowledge that this kind of experience, totally unplugged and un-pampered, isn’t for everyone. “We want people to be here who want to be here,” says Bole.

After six days at the Darwin, it’s easy to believe you’ve stepped back in time, to somewhere outside our modern world where life is simpler—a reminder, perhaps, that dude ranches are still as essential for mental and physical wellbeing as they were a century ago.

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