A Refreshing Contact with Something Real: The Appeal of Dude Ranch Vacations in Canada and the United States, 1920-1940
Date
2015-09-21
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Abstract
This thesis examines the popularity of dude ranch vacations in the first half of the twentieth century. It demonstrates that the appeal of dude ranches rested on the appeal of the cowboy and the western environment, both of which relied on currents of antimodernism and discomfort with an increasingly urbanized world. Popular literature disseminated the constructed image of the cowboy and the west to people in eastern Canada and the United States, and in Europe. A robust image emerged that ranchers drew on and modified in order to create the dude ranch experience. Easterners used the cowboy archetype as an avatar. Many slipped into the role only for a weeks on vacation, but others took it on as a career or lifestyle. The following pages examine the creation of the cowboy and western images, and explore the ways in which individual ranchers interacted with and took on those images.
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Keywords
History--Modern, History--Canadian
Citation
Herriman, M. (2015). A Refreshing Contact with Something Real: The Appeal of Dude Ranch Vacations in Canada and the United States, 1920-1940 (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/24995