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Teton Home and Living / Fall-Winter 2009 / Dude Ranch Pancake Syrup

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Dude Ranch Pancake Syrup

Mary Schmitt’s sweet collection of cowgirl memorabilia preserves the feminine flavor of America’s frontier past

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Harsh weather lined their faces and hard work gnarled their hands, but cowgirls were feminine women, capable and strong. They weren’t discussing suffrage around the campfire. They had their independence.

Working outdoors where they wanted to be, making their own decisions, crafting a fulfilling life, and being respected for their contributions pretty well rounded out the cowgirls’ definition of liberation. Throw in a night sky full of stars, a mug of hot coffee, and a plateful of beans, and life couldn’t get much better.

At her home in Jackson Hole, Mary Schmitt pours mugs of steaming coffee and heaps a platter with thick chunks of banana bread. Her slim frame is distorted through the old glass of an oversized bottle sitting empty on her kitchen counter. The label reads “Dude Ranch Pancake Syrup,” suggesting long-ago stacks of sourjacks drizzled with sticky sweetness.

Although it’s a whimsical relic, it is a fitting icon as Mary talks about how she and her mother, Barbara Schmitt of Jackson, preserve regional history. Together they’ve assembled a collection of memorabilia so sweet neither could turn loose of any artifact resulting from the collaboration. By blending their interests and expertise, they broadened their collective vision. The two recognized a significant segment of Western Americana that was being overlooked, anticipating by almost a decade what other collectors would be bidding up at auctions today.

In 1989 the Los Angeles Times reported that saddles and spurs had gone for unprecedented prices at a Butterfield’s and Butterfield’s auction of early Western cowboy gear. As she read, Mary nodded her approval of the higher prices. The cowboy was romantic, recognized globally as a symbol for America’s spirit of adventure and independence. His gear should be valued. It should be preserved.

Mary read the last sentence then flipped quickly through the remaining pages of the paper, searching for the article’s missing facts. The news account didn’t attribute value to cowgirl gear. It didn’t even mention cowgirls.

Barbara smiles remembering her daughter’s take-action reaction.

“Mom,” Mary stated emphatically, “we should collect cowgirl stuff.”

Of course Mary had no intention of turning her back on cowboys and their gear. Her affinity for Western memorabilia is so great that her passion is her livelihood. Mary opened Cayuse Western Americana, a gallery of cowboy, Indian, and national park antiques, four years ago in Jackson.

Of course Mary had no intention of turning her back on cowboys and their gear. Her affinity for Western memorabilia is so great that her passion is her livelihood. Mary opened Cayuse Western Americana, a gallery of cowboy, Indian and national park antiques, four years ago in Jackson.

She knows the heartbeat and the plumbing of every artifact in Cayuse, each piece’s romantic and pragmatic history. She can relate how each was used and whether its glow results from legend of from silver polish and saddle soap only.

But Mary’s aim in gathering cowgirl gear was double-barreled. She knew the early cowgirls were trailblazers, and it bothered her that their memories were being lost through the cracks of recorded history. And their trappings, the colorful scraps of their indomitable spirit, were what she wanted surrounding her at home. For among Schmitt family members, a home has less to do with decorating than with gathering what is personally provocative.

At the time, Barbara was no greenhorn at tracking history’s tangible footprints, but her collecting centered on Native American pieces and emphasized work from the Plateau tribes of Idaho, Washington and Oregon. Her home reanimates Native American history with a body of artifacts unrivaled by many museum collections. Still, Barbara is enthusiastic about all things Western, and she thought this a trail worth following with her daughter.

So in 1989, Barbara and Mary found historical and interpersonal balance by accumulating the West’s collective past. Their team approach to ferreting facts and artifacts continues today, offering mother and daughter a stimulating sense of history and each other.

Deftly sidestepping her rottweiler, Buster, Mary settles on the sofa without spilling a bean’s worth of coffee. “Mom and I have ongoing discussions about whether we should restrict our focus for collecting, but little success narrowing our scope of interest.

“For instance, when we consider cowgirl pieces, the time span involved is brief. The Trail Drive era was from around 1880 to the 1920s. Women were disguising themselves as boys and young men to work cattle drives or to homestead with dreams of owning their own ranches and herds. From 1900 to 1940, Wild West shows and rodeos were introducing women as star performers.

“Look at those 70 or so years,” invites Mary with excitement. “The expansion westward was the birth of a new country. It was time for a new definition of women.

“Frances Parker did a lot to make individuality among women acceptable,” she says, reaching above her head to pull a first edition of Park’s 1904 novel Hope Hathaway from a bookshelf. “This was a woman writing about a woman, a Western woman. The character of hope would have been considered a handful in her time—saucy, edgy and absolutely admirable.

“Charlie Russell illustrated the novel with lithographs made from his color-wash paintings, some of the few he ever did of a cowgirl. I’ve managed to find five of the eight prints that were made from the original lithographs.”

Mary holds out a favorite print that has the drama of a scene from Perils of Pauline, with a Sadie Hawkins twist. With her pistol drawn, the beautiful Hope Hathaway is seen saving the life of the man she loves.

Mary discusses working cowgirls or sharpshooters and trick riders with equal fervor. All of these women had glamour and verve. They were breaking old molds, bucking rugged conditions on the range and social restrictions at home. They were women impossible to categorize and hard to take for granted.

Ranch women, working cowgirls, rodeo stars, the golden era of dude ranching’s “dudines” and their “dudette” daughters—all are represented in a collection rounded out by choice remnants from Jackson Hole’s early days.