Wheels of Time: Stagecoach tours at Wrangler Springs Ranch
Doug Howser and Dale Mee tell stories about Wrangler Springs Ranch during a stagecoach ride Friday, July 19. (Avery Howe/Bigfork Eagle)
Dale and Pat Mee and Doug Howser of Bigfork Stagecoach Rides and Rentals at Wrangler Springs Friday, July 19. (Avery Howe/Bigfork Eagle)
Dale Mee and Doug Howser on a stagecoach ride at Wrangler Springs Friday, July 19. (Avery Howe/Bigfork Eagle)
Doug Howser and Dale Mee ready their mule team for a ride Friday, July 19. (Avery Howe/Bigfork Eagle)
Reed Darrow, owner of Wrangler Springs Ranch, and his grandsons board a stagecoach for a ride around the grounds Friday, July 19. (Avery Howe/Bigfork Eagle)
Dale Mee and Doug Howser are hooking the horses up to the stagecoach before the summer heat fills the barn, their mustaches waxed to hooked points “for historical accuracy, and a little drama.”
Bigfork Stagecoach Rides and Rentals is new to Wrangler Springs Ranch this summer, but stagecoaches have been running in the Flathead since its early years of settlement. The coach Mee and Howser pulled on Friday, a tall, rambling yellow and red wagon, is called a Yellowstone stagecoach. It used to run through Yosemite National Park. Similar coaches would have run through Glacier National Park.
The job is a dream for Mee and his wife Pat Mee, who met working dude ranches and have since found their passion in stagecoaches. The couple has run coaches for 18 years based in Arizona as Gilmer & Salisbury Stagecoach. They saw an ad from the Dude Ranch Association by Doug Averill, who leases Wrangler Springs and runs Paladin Conservancy, a Western education nonprofit. They packed up their pair of mules, two Percheron-Morgan crosses, three mini horses and a spare and brought the whole caravan up to Bigfork this summer, mud wagon and fifth wheel in tow. Howser is helping in his retirement after years working with pack stock out West his whole career.
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