Dude, It’s a Hard Business Dude ranching has been a mainstay of the valley’s economy since the 1920s, but it has never been easy.
NEAL HENDERSON
BY BRIGID MANDER
WHEN LORING WOODMAN decided to sell the historic Darwin Ranch, one of the most remote guest ranches in the area, located deep in the Gros Ventre Mountains between Jackson and Bondurant, it wasn’t an easy task to find the right buyer for the land, barns, and cabins. Woodman put the isolated 160-acre inholding in the Bridger-Teton National Forest abutting the Gros Ventre Wilderness—with no cell service—on the market for $8.5 million, and hoped for the best. When Woodman bought the Darwin in 1964, it was merely a pioneers’ outpost. He reHorses at the R Lazy S stored the main house and five historic cabins, are let out to pasture in the shadow of the which had fallen into disrepair, into comfortable Teton Range at the but spare guest lodging, as well as a few outend of the day. buildings, and ran it as a summer guest ranch for the next fifty years. The ranch sold in 2014 to San Francisco-based Paul Klingenstein and Kathy Bole, who operate it much the same as Woodman did, down to retaining the staff that have worked there for decades. The Darwin met with a very lucky outcome. Today it is most often developers buying dude ranches. Raising cattle isn’t as profitable as it once was, and ranching in any capacity is hard physical labor. On top of that, in areas like Jackson where real estate prices are sky-high, the temptation to sell for top dollar to developers, as opposed to more conservation-minded buyers, can be tough to resist.
SUMMER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE
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