Legacy INDUCTEE
E BAR L RANCH, EST. 1925
DISTRICT 11 - YEAR 2025
The E Bar L Ranch, near Greenough, Montana, on the Blackfoot River is one of the oldest family-owned and operated guest ranches in Montana. Summer 2025 will be its 100th season. Oral tradition says that Gertrude Landsburg “Mah” Potter was fed up with hosting husband Orrin William “Pops” Potter’s friends from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Great War, so much so that she demanded they help pay for food and service. A cook was hired, some horses rented, a couple cabins were thrown together and in 1925, the E Bar L Ranch became a promising guest ranch.
Now in its fourth generation, the ranch doesn’t do any conventional advertising because it thinks word of mouth works best. It has capacity for about 40 guests, access to 8,000 acres and is only open in the summer. The E Bar L is not for everyone. Generally speaking, it’s a place for active folks who want to be outside and who want to avoid a canned experience. People come to ride, shoot skeet, float down the river, fly-fish, eat, drink, and be merry. Riding horseback is probably the main draw because a person can really get out there and "git after it.” E Bar L offers exceptional opportunities to develop skills while riding in open country. Guests unsaddle their own horse, staff don't wear name tags but know how guests like their eggs, meals served in the Main Lodge dining room are buffet style, but desserts are exquisitely plated creations. There’s no swimming pool, tennis courts, or golf course, but there's a yoga session available most afternoons and a massage therapist is available twice a week. Wi-Fi and cell service are sluggish. E Bar L believes it's a great place for families because parents can get away from their kids and vice versa.
Guest lodging is in simple log cabins that generally have single beds in two rooms joined by a bathroom with hot and cold running water and electricity. There’s no extra charge for bats or other wildlife that may frequent the cabins.
What makes the place special is the people who lodge there. You might be Mr. or Mrs. CEO of Blah, or Miss XYZ heiress, or a British royal, actor or actresses, film maker, dignitary, etc., but the affordable weekly rates allow the ranch to host equally important but normal people, too. On the ranch, you're just you.
The E Bar L Ranch peddles in the state of mind that is Montana. Both guests and staff experience mountains, rivers, plains, abundant wildlife, self-reliance, resilience, wonder, and humility. They leave the ranch chapped, sunburnt, sleep deprived, dehydrated, saddle sore, bruised from firing shotguns, inner tube rashes and might have pulled a hamstring, but guests are oddly recharged in a way that is increasingly difficult to find these days. The ranch enjoys a certain irreverence that fosters lasting friendships, the kind born from time in the saddle or around the campfire. Sure, there’s an element of trauma bonding, too, that comes with being part of any quirky, generations-old family endeavor. Along with the sunsets and bacon, it’s all part of the ranch’s secret sauce.
How does any of this contribute to Montana or the idea of Western heritage?
By exposing staff and guests to Montana and nurturing their curiosity, the ranch hooks their hearts. It has seen staff and guests over the last century make significant contributions to landmark conservation efforts, such as restoring and protecting the Blackfoot River watershed and helping to create the Montana Legacy Project, which has conserved 310,000 acres of former Plum Creek Timber lands in western Montana. In part, such accomplishments began with catching a first cutthroat, learning to post, sit a lope, mend fence or admiring the Milky Way while stumbling to bed from the campfire at the E Bar L Ranch.
O.W. “Bill” Potter, Jr., the son of Mah and Pop Potter, may be ten years dead, but he still rules from six feet under a pile of rocks in the North Pasture. The current generation of owners and managers of Andy and Connie Erickson, Matt Know, Jim Stone, Caitlin Wall, Juanita Vero, Mary and Louis Vero ensure the efforts continue.
Photo by Jared Bowen.