Arizona's Fabulous Guest Ranches

As the world has grown more crowded and more cardboard, the West-in fact, anything even remotely Western-has become almost an object of cult worship. The French stood in long lines last winter at the Grand Palais in Paris for a glimpse of the Cowboy Artists of America exhibit Western fashions, now bearing designer labels, have gained admittance into even the most sacrosanct realms of proper Bostonian drawing room circles . . . and Urban Cowboy has made the two-step the hottest dance craze since disco hit. Visitors by the thousands come on pilgrimage to the Southwest each year from all over the world. Some come looking for open, unpeopled vistas, canyons created by nature and not by monoliths of concrete and steel, for elbow room, for sunshine and fresh air. And, some come for a piece of a simpler past . . . genuine smiles and warm hospitality, action instead of "meaningful dialogue." They find it for a day at a rodeo in Payson, or an evening rubbing elbows with the cowboys on Prescott's "Whiskey Row," or in the imagined echo of jingling spurs and dancing girls in the shadowy silence of the Bird Cage Saloon in Tombstone. Among them also are adventurous souls not satisfied just to be observers . . . who yearn for a West that will stand still long enough to be tasted slowly and absorbed into their own spirit. It does exist, Seeker After The Real West. Perhaps the last bastion of aWest that can be visited, be participated in, is lovingly perpetuated at Arizona's guest ranches. There-for a day, a week or a month-people can shed their city side. They can exchange high heels or business suits for cowboy boots and jeans, a gas-guzzling metal monster for a horse, street signs and stoplights for saguaros and dazzling sunsets, trade wary aloofness for warm affection more than that, stretch spirits too long caged behind superficial city-ese. The guest ranches aren't new answers to Shangri-La. They've been around a long time, evolving over more than three-quarters of a century from working cattle ranches. At first, ranches took in Eastern "dudes"-those who craved to be cowboys-to help out with the day-to-day ranch chores of tending stock, fixing fences (often the roughest, dirtiest jobs the hands didn't want to do themselves) when they were shorthanded. Even Teddy Roosevelt, as a sheltered Eastern kid, was sent West to "dude" in the hope that the experience would do him good, physically and otherwise. Certainly, those who didn't go shrieking off into the sunset were invigorated and improved by the experience . . . they were tougher, had more endurance, and definitely more selfconfidence. (As for Teddy, he gained a life-long love of the West . . . and a place in history.) Eventually, those on the listening end of the word-of-mouth began to swell the number of dudes . . . and, as the years went by, the dudes kept comingforegoing the "in" watering holes of Europe, Florida, the Bahamas. It became evident that the sunshine circuit was not a passing fancy; and for many ranches, the cows began to take a backseat. Still-unlike most vacation retreatshot and cold running everything is not what guests expect for the price of a room. The five small family-run guest ranches on my visiting list don't pretend to be luxury resorts. (There were some old-time favorites, like Wickenburg Inn and Tanque Verde in Tucson, that were not included because they have grown much larger over the years to meet popular demand-now hosting over 100 guests-and have become year 'round equestrian-tennis resorts more than the intimate "family ranch" of traditional "dude-ing.") Kay El Bar and Flying E in Wickenburg, Elkhorn near Robles, Circle Z in Patagonia and Sprucedale south of Alpine are all relatively old ranches; they're seasonal (the desert resorts are open generally from October or November to early May; the alpine from late May to September); they are small -accommodating from 28 to 48 guests; Saddle leather and horse flesh - it's all a part of dude ranch life. Deeply rooted in things of the past, the art of shoeing horses in the corral may attract a larger crowd than the shows on television back home.

Elkhorn

Saddle leather and horse flesh - it's all a part of dude ranch life. Deeply rooted in things of the past, the art of shoeing horses in the corral may attract a larger crowd than the shows on television back home.