UXU Ranch National Register of Historic Places Listing

Bronson Backus wanted a piece of Wyoming. In 1929, he secured a homestead patent along the North Fork of the Shoshone River, right on the dusty highway leading straight to Yellowstone's eastern gate. He started building immediately. This wasn't a traditional, dirty cattle operation, though. Backus built a dude ranch, a place where wealthy Easterners paid thirty-five dollars a week to play-act as rugged trail riders. He used local lodgepole pine to throw up a main lodge and guest cabins. The cabins had stone fireplaces but also modern plumbing, a crucial luxury for city folks who wanted the wild West without the actual dirt.

The National Register added the UXU to its list in 2003. Walk onto the property today, and you see the exact same layout that greeted travelers ninety years ago. The buildings show off the peak of Rocky Mountain rustic design. We are talking saddle-notched logs, exposed rafter tails, and heavy fieldstone chimneys built with rock hauled right out of the river. But the ranch's significance goes beyond just pretty logs. It represents a massive cultural shift. Early auto tourists, driving Ford Model Ts and Packards, bypassed the big luxury hotels in Yellowstone because they wanted intimacy, so they pulled off the highway and stayed here instead.

It survived the Great Depression. Actually, dude ranching thrived during the 1930s because wealthy Americans couldn't travel to Europe, so they spent their cash in the Rocky Mountains instead. World War II gas rationing eventually choked out the tourist trade for a few years, but the UXU bounced back. Today, the Shoshone National Forest owns the land. Private concessionaires still run the place, keeping the old-school Western hospitality alive under the shadow of those red volcanic cliffs.