6 Great Dude Ranches and Guest Ranches in the U.S. and Canada

Vacations don’t get more all-American (or all-Canadian) than this: spectacular scenery and outdoor adventures with your kids or grandkids at a dude ranch. You’ll feel wind-in-your-hair vitality as you balance atop your trusty steed, trotting across along streams, into forests, and along desert washes. Learning to control a horse gives kids—and adults—confidence, and at many ranches, twice-daily rides can stretch into long barbecue luncheons or all-day journeys into pristine wilderness.

But you don’t even have to ride. More dude ranches also lure wannabe wranglers with fly-fishing, whitewater rafting, zip lining, yoga, and other off-the-horse adventures. And in the evenings, you can square dance, make s’mores by the fire, and soak up a sky full of stars. 

Each of these dude ranches has a different flavor and locale, but all create memorable family vacations that celebrate the pioneer spirit and bring you in communion with nature, North American-style.

The Nine Quarter Circle Ranch in Gallatin Gateway, Montana, sprawls on 1,000 acres in a valley surrounded by two million acres of national forest—riding is over mountains, meadows, and alongside rivers. Owned by the Kelsey family for more than 75 years, the ranch breeds, raises, and trains its own horses, making it easy for wranglers to match a mount’s personality to your riding ability. 

Kids aged 3 to 5 can simply sit in the saddle as guides lead the buckeroos through pastures as part of a supervised play program. One of the ranch's standout programs, Rough Riders, assigns kids aged 6 to 9 the same horses for the week, mastering fundamentals and riding trails together as they form a bond. Ages 10 and older join adults with similar skills for trail rides. 

Nine Quarter can also arrange fly fishing, swimming in a mountain pond, and hiking through wildflower-filled meadows. Its overnight pack trip is a good way to bond with teens. 

Rates: all-inclusive with meals
Minimum stay: 6 nights, Sunday to Saturday 
Season: mid-June–mid-September
Ride length: 2 hours, and there are also lunchtime and all-day rides
Minimum trail ride age: 6
Children’s riding program: ages 6–9 
Supervised non-trail riding children’s program: infant to 5 years old
Maximum guests: 50 guests in 1–4 bedroom cabins

On this 350-acre ranch, kids ages 6 years and older ride with their parents through woods and open pastures in the Ozarks’ Boston Mountains, but riding horses isn’t the only way to whoop it up at Horseshoe Canyon Ranch in Jasper, Arkansas. There are lots of other things to do, too: Glide on zip lines, paddle canoes, shoot skeet, hike, try archery, and rock climb using a via ferrata (“iron way”), a safety cable system that anchors iron rungs in the rocks for foot and handholds. The arrangement makes scrambling up and over rocks relatively easy for novices. 

Counselors lead kids aged 3 to 5 on pony rides and take the kids on bug hunts, nature walks, and to the pond for fishing. 

The 500-acre Stagecoach Trails Guest Ranch in Northwest Arizona borders 360,000 acres of federal land in the foothills of the Mohave and Hualapai mountains. Picture you and your family riding through the classic cowboy country you’ve seen in old Westerns: high mountain desert dotted with scrub brush and cacti. The stucco-style buildings add to the atmosphere, as do the antique buckboards, covered wagons, surreys, and the authentic stagecoach you can board for a jaunt.  

Rides become progressively longer and more challenging as the week progresses and your skills improve. All-day routes go deep into the mountains to reach an abandoned gold mine. 

Like many properties, Three Bars Guest and Cattle Ranch, in Cranbrook, British Columbia, also offers an excellent slate of out-of-the-saddle adventures. The river rafting, mountain biking, e-bike tours, fly-fishing and archery options are as much a part of your lodging package as horseback riding. 

Owned and operated by the Beckley family (whom you can watch train in competitive reining), the horse-and-cattle ranch unfolds on 2,500 acres on a plateau above the St. Mary River with access to 35,000 additional acres in the spectacular Canadian Rocky Mountains. Trails take you down along rivers and up into the peaks.

The ranch owns its horses, so wranglers can easy pair you with suitable steeds for the week. Families can ride together, and kids 6 to 12 years old can giddy-up on their own with newfound friends of similar ages and abilities. Outings for small children are along the lines of frog catching, fort building, and gold panning. Not that you’ll need the nuggets: If you’re spending U.S. dollars, the favorable exchange rate stretches your vacation budget.

Situated on 878 acres in the Sawtooth and White Cloud Mountains, Idaho Rocky Mountain Ranch, in Stanley, is a place to savor the celestial beauty of Idaho at its best, even if your interest in horses is minimal. Your views will be of snow-capped mountains, icy blue streams, and forests thick with lodgepole pine and Douglas fir. The rugged scenery and historic log cabins catapult you back to the Old West, but one with excellent food, professional massages, and twice-daily yoga. 

A working cattle ranch owned by the Rankin family since 1863, the Quarter Circle U Rankin Ranch’s 31,000-acre spread opened to guest riders in 1965. Twice a day, you and your dudes aged 6 or older ride for an hour through meadows, over rolling hills and chaparral, and across and oak and pine tree-covered mountains.