Skip the Dude Ranch. A Hands-on Vacation at These Working Ranches Is Far More Authentic and Gratifying

ON A RECENT Thursday at Chico Basin, an 87,000-acre cattle ranch near Colorado Springs, Colo., I sat secure in my saddle atop a palomino horse named Butters, staring down on organized chaos. Dozens of heifers and calves passed by in a stream of horns, pounding hooves and glossy, reddish backs. They were following the lead of a big, jet-black cow, christened the Widowmaker, as we herded her to a mid-pasture pen. When she suddenly darted off toward open range, Butters and I sprinted to block her escape, then ran to help deter other cows trying to run past the pen gate.

This isn’t everyone’s idea of a vacation. But after my first-ever wrangling session, I felt thoroughly exhilarated. Better yet, I forgot all about Covid, emails piling up in my inbox and the rest of my everyday life. For one vigorous, immensely gratifying day, all I cared about was Butters and a herd of cattle.

The concept of the dude ranch first came about in the late 1800s. These tourist resorts introduced Easterners to a romanticized version of life in the scenic, undeveloped West. (At the time, “dude” was slang for an urban dandy.) Today they still provide attractive, often luxurious vacation options—socially distant refuges, in naturally soothing settings, whose popularity unsurprisingly spiked during the pandemic. But the experience at many of these built-for-tourist operations usually reflects few of the realities of ranch life. Chico Basin Ranch is emphatically not a dude ranch, but rather one of a small number of working ranches in the U.S. that invite a few paying guests to join the workdays. That can mean waking up at dawn, sharing homemade meals with ranch staff and spending hours on labor-intensive tasks, from tending vegetable gardens and feeding livestock to repairing fences and herding, even branding, cattle. In exchange, industrious visitors get a physically challenging getaway and a chance to participate in a great American tradition—minus the artifice of a deluxe dude ranch.

During my first day at Chico Basin, I didn’t just learn how to herd cattle but also how grazing rotations are modeled on the ways wildlife naturally behaves (leaving grasslands healthy and naturally resilient), why Chico’s managers prefers mostly smaller Beefmaster breed cows (which adapt well to drought and both hot and cold climates) and why they don’t dehorn their cattle the way most ranchers do (so the mothers can efficiently defend their calves from predators).

I also learned that Chico Basin’s open grasslands are, unexpectedly, a protected refuge for more than 300 species of migratory songbirds and nesting birds. In between ranch chores—or instead of them; guests are under no obligation to lift a finger—visitors can birdwatch, swim or fish in any one of four lakes, go horseback riding or simply hang out and enjoy the scenery. In late spring, when I visited, wildflowers dotted the verdant grassland. The ranch can welcome up to six guests in a historic adobe bunkhouse, which includes two rooms and a shared bath. During my stay, I shared the ranch with only two other guests, including Erika Broyles, an Air Force veteran from Louisiana and mother of three young children. An avid equestrian, she came to Chico Basin on a solo vacation, a gift from her husband. “I’ve been following them on Instagram for a long time, I love what they do here,” she told me, referring to the ranch’s focus on conservation. The trip, initially postponed by the pandemic, became a welcome antidote to months under lockdown at home, she said.