Jane Johnson’s parents came to the dude ranch on Cal Coombs Road in the ’50s and ’60s on weekends to drink and socialize with neighbors. One night, the cowboys on the ranch gathered the bones of dead horses and sewed them together with wire creating a moveable skeleton. The cowboys strung up the bones at the corner of the road and waited for patrons driving home. They pranked everyone driving back from the bar that night, scaring them with their morbid art project.
This was just one story told Thursday night at the site of the Pioneer Valley Dude Ranch at an event hosted by the Colrain Historical Society attended by about 60 Colrain residents and travelers who came to reminisce about the beloved vacation spot.
Belden Merims, Colrain Historical Society Board of Directors Chair, explained that she always knew about the ranch, but it only dawned on her in the past couple years how strange it was to have a dude ranch in this area.
Merims told the room full of excited guests that the ranch opened sometime between 1946 and 1947 as the first dude ranch in Massachusetts. It was opened by Ray and Yvonne Dumas, who took an interesting path to open their ranch.
When Ray Dumas finished his time in the Marines, he met Yvonne in a hairdressing class. They later opened a hair salon together. For vacations they would visit dude ranches around the Northeast, learning how to run one themselves. Ray Dumas finally stumbled upon an abandoned barn while he was in Colrain and bought it. He spent a year redoing the barn and finally opened a dude ranch of his own.
Each summer, 50 to 60 dudes a week from across the Northeast would visit his ranch, paying $45 each for the entire vacation.
Local girls waited tables and made beds, while the boys maintained the horses. “Locals and dudes were mutually exotic,” Merims said. The two groups would mix, dance and learn from each other while in the ranch.
On the weekends, parties were held in the “Round Up Room,” later named the “Hop Along Room,” that led to more mixing between locals and visitors.
Merims spoke of many of the cowboys on the ranch who were hired for the season. Clarence Tex Miller (the “Singing Cowboy”) was one of the favorites in the list. He worked for six years on the ranch, always whistling and playing the fiddle on Friday nights. Later, he became a carpenter and built his own house that still stands in Colrain.
Dumas placed ads for the ranch in papers across the Northeast. In a 1950 edition of the New York Herald, it read, “Come to a real western ranch just off the Mohawk Trail … Riding done under the supervision of trained reliable cowboys.” Merims noted that both of these assertions were a stretch from the truth.
As Merims showed archival photographs of the ranch, locals pointed out teenage versions of themselves and their neighbors.
The most popular time of year at the dude ranch was deer hunting season. Hunters would flock to the ranch for hunting trips during the day, and drinking and poker at night.
Two hundred fifty gallons of hard cider were fermented every year by Dumas for the guests. One year he made rye whiskey, but he quickly stopped due to the fact that it was illegal.
Dumas once was tried for a felony for deerjacking, risking losing his liquor license and shutting down the ranch. He used his Colrain connections to receive a pardon from the governor for not only this crime but many others including driving violations and a citation for serving alcohol to minors. With this pardon, the ranch was saved until it was sold in the 1970s.
John Watling came from Easthampton for the presentation. He remembered coming to the ranch in off season when he was 8 years old. He explained his family couldn’t afford vacation, but Dumas hosted his family like he did with many friends and vagabonds. Watling shared a memory of mountains of pancakes coming into the dining room of the ranch, all cooked by Dumas himself, and spoke about climbing through the rafters of the barns with other children.
Colrain resident Erik Goldstein shared stories of his regular hikes through abandoned roads that were once populated by cowboys and their horses. “Learning this history is a real treat,” he said.
Contact Bella Levavi at 413-930-4579 or blevavi@recorder.com