Overview

For more than half a century, spending time at the Dixie Dude Ranch in Bandera, Texas, has been a tradition for visitors from all over the world who are looking for that perfect western getaway to unwind, relax, and put the stress of every day life on hold.

The ranch retreat, nestled in the spectacular Texas Hill Country, continues to adhere to its original purpose - a real working ranch where longhorn cattle, Spanish goats, and pigs are raised, where real cowboys work the horses and compete in rodeos, and where the meals are always home cooked. And when they tell a guest "This is your home on the range", they mean it.

Clay Conoly, a fourth-generation family member and grandson of the original owners, Billie and Dee Crowell, manages the ranch with his wife, Diane, their 12 year old son, Alec, and Alec's three year old brother, Sharp.

Today, Dixie Dude Ranch has 20 units consisting of individual cottages, as well as duplex cabins and lodge rooms that feature early Texas architecture with rustic appointments. The ranch is open to individuals, couples, families, or reunions, and offers plenty of planned activities throughout the week. For those who prefer time alone, the 725-acre ranch offers 14 different nature trails. Guests at the ranch have access to all of these trails to hike, hunt for fossils and Indian arrowheads, or go bird watching. More than 170 species of native and migratory birds can be spotted.

History buffs will want to visit the Range War Cemetary, located about a quarter mile from the Dixie Dude Ranch headquarters, where the bodies of two German immigrants, William Maass and his son, Charles, are buried. The German family homesteaded the land in the late 1800s and encountered frequent problems with ranchers who wanted pastures to remain open for grazing. The hostility eventurally led to a fight between the young German boy and a rancher who was attempting to drive a herd through the Maass claim. The boy was killed, and his grief-stricken father died shortly thereafter. William Wallace Whitley, Conoly's great-grandfather, bought the land almost 15 years later at an auction in 1901. The graves have never been moved.

Whitley started the guest ranch business on July 3, 1937, with his daughter and son-in-law, Billie and Dee Crowell. The young couple left California where Billie was an actress and Dee was a stunt man, moving with their daughter, Darlene, to Bandera County during the height of the Depression. The name Dixie Dude Ranch symbolizes their trek from California back to their "Dixieland".

Over the years, generations of families have fallen in love with Dixie Dude Ranch, and many couple who either married or honeymooned there have returned to celebrate golden anniversaries. The ranch is a popular site for numerous video productions, including feature films on CNN, MTV, and the BBC, as well as commercials for major advertisers such as Dodge, Halston, and Dairy Queen.

Dixie Dude Ranch has remained popular because it lives up to its mission - a traditional Texas working ranch ... friendly, simple, peaceful and unpretentious ... a place where a guest arrives as a stranger and leaves as a friend.