Bar BC Dude Ranch

The Bar BC Dude Ranch is a historic visitor site on the west bank of the Snake River in Grand Teton National Park. The buildings are remnants of an early 20th-century guest ranch, not an operating ranch today. It is a good stop if you like Western history: visitors can walk the grounds, but the cabins may be unsafe to enter.

From Jackson, go north to Moose Junction and turn onto Teton Park Road. Pass the entrance station and Cottonwood Creek Picnic Area, then turn right onto River Road about a quarter mile beyond the picnic area. Follow it nearly two miles to a small lot by a gate. Plan on four-wheel drive; the park's dedicated access page says it is required to reach the overlook.

From the lot, walk the cobble-covered hill toward the river to see the remaining buildings. For a view down over the buildings, take the path to the right of the gate to a terrace wayside overlooking the ranch. From there, frame the cabins against the Tetons to capture both the structures and the setting.

In 1912, Struthers Burt and Dr. Horace Carncross each filed a 160-acre homestead near Cottonwood Creek to establish Jackson Hole's second dude ranch. The first summer brought six guests. Within a decade the property had grown to more than 600 acres and 45 buildings; at its peak, as many as 50 guests stayed here.

Guests rode horses, helped with ranch chores and took pack trips. Evenings brought costume parties, original plays and literary discussions, with the dance cabin as the social center. In the tack room, look for horses' names written above where their saddles hung. The ranch's artificial swimming pool was a hollow fed by a ditch from Cottonwood Creek more than three miles away; two shallow depressions are all that remain.

Burt's 1924 memoir, The Diary of a Dude Wrangler, helped popularize dude-ranch vacations. He first opposed a national park in Jackson Hole, then became an advocate for preserving the valley as development threatened its open space. He sold his share of the Bar BC in 1930 to support conservation. The ranch buildings remain along the river, and the site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.