marlboro ranch trip 2022

UPDATE: Marlboro Maker Sells Its 18,000-Acre Crazy Mountain Montana Ranch

The Crazy Mountain Ranch is an 18,000 acre working ranch near Clyde Park, Montana. It is owned and operated by Phillip-Morris (Marlboro), and they send hundreds of contest winners each year to this ranch, all-expenses paid for several days.

I am fortunate enough to be friends with someone who won the trip (Wonko!), and who also had a very, very pregnant wife who couldn't take that kind of travel. So it wound up being me and Wonko heading out to Big Sky Country for three days that we will never forget!

I won't give away too much about the trip itself except to say that the staff are incredibly nice and helpful, every need is taken care of, and you will not want to leave. You can find lots more information at Achillies Marlboro Stuff , or by going to some of the other sites on my links page.

Please check my music website, Dammit Jackson  

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Sale of Crazy Mountain Ranch finalized

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The ink is officially dry on the long-rumored sale of one of the largest properties in the foothills of the Crazy Mountains, the 18,000-acre Crazy Mountain Ranch east of Clyde Park.

In a press release about the purchase, Lone Mountain Land Company said it has no plans for a residential subdivision of the property. The company also said it has no plans to conduct a commercial heliskiing operation there. Both prospects had generated public concerns in the area.

“Lone Mountain Land Company will continue to operate the ranch’s cow-calf operation and guest ranch. We look forward to working with our neighbors, the Clyde Park community, and the Forest Service to be thoughtful stewards of the land and good members of the community.” CrossHarbor Capital Partners co-founder Sam Byrne

The property will be managed by Lone Mountain Land Company, a subsidiary of CrossHarbor Capital Partners, which also owns the Yellowstone Club, the exclusive ski resort and residential community south of Big Sky. 

“Lone Mountain Land Company will continue to operate the ranch’s cow-calf operation and guest ranch,” CrossHarbor co-founder Sam Byrne said in the release. “We look forward to working with our neighbors, the Clyde Park community, and the Forest Service to be thoughtful stewards of the land and good members of the community.”

Crazy Mountain Ranch, known locally as Marlboro Ranch, was purchased from tobacco company Philip Morris, which acquired the property in 2000 and operated it as a commercial guest ranch. The property includes a cattle operation and 20 buildings designed to create an Old West ambience. When not horseback riding, fishing, snowmobiling or skeet shooting, guests could wander through an old saloon, receive a spa treatment or attend events at a barn venue. For the past year and a half, guest use of the facility has been limited by the pandemic.

The Crazy Mountains’ next act

With a heliskiing operation looking for a foothold and the rumored sale of one of the largest ranches in the range, Montanans are wondering what’s next for this isolated and iconic landscape.

“Due to COVID-19, the ranch has not employed most of the guest ranch employees, and Lone Mountain Land Company looks forward to resuming operations,” the release said, adding that the company will retain the 13 full-time employees who currently work there and plans to hire more.

The Forest Service recently explored the possibility of conducting a land exchange with Crazy Mountain Ranch, which owns several sections of land inside the boundary of the Custer Gallatin National Forest. Last December, the agency decided not to move forward with the exchange , which would have swapped 1,305 acres of lower-elevation forest land for 1,920 acres of Crazy Mountain Ranch property at higher elevation. At the time, the Forest Service said it might take another run at an exchange in the future, given more time and consideration.

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Amanda Eggert studied print journalism at the University of Montana. Prior to becoming a full-time journalist, Amanda spent four years working with the Forest Service as a wildland firefighter. After leaving the Forest Service in 2014, Amanda worked for Outside magazine as an editorial fellow before joining Outlaw Partners’ staff to lead coverage for Explore Big Sky newspaper and contribute writing and editing to Explore Yellowstone and Mountain Outlaw magazines. Prior to joining Montana Free Press’ staff in 2021 Amanda was a freelance writer, researcher and interviewer. In addition to writing... More by Amanda Eggert

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Echoes of the southwest.

Photography, history, and stories from all my treks plus crafts, antiques, art, and much more...

Crazy Mountain Ranch

Oh what fun! I've never been to Montana and would LOVE to go! This place looks like so much fun! I can't wait to see the rest of your photos et. al. HOW on earth did your hubby win it through Marlboro? I don't smoke and neither does the Beau, but this is really cool!

That looks like so much fun!

Tara, I think if you get on the Crazy Mountain Ranch website, you will find ways of taking a vacation there. Everyone was so nice that worked there and were extremely accommodating. I wouldn't have entered any Marlboro contest if my hubs didn't smoke. His bad habit got us this fantastic trip. (Don't start smoking to win the trip, lol) Zoe, we had a blast. I don't think either of us, as well as many of the other guests, had any idea what this place was going to be like. It was wonderful!

Except for the snow, that could be AZ. It was so western and cool! I'm so jealous you got to play in the snow. I haven't seen snow in about 15 years or so!

That is exactly how it felt Sis, like we were in an AZ western town with the exception of the snow. I was so glad Mother Nature let it snow!

We are glad you had fun while here in Montana! I work for the company that runs the gift shops in the airport and the people coming to and from the Marlboro ranch are always the best! Thanks for posting pictures, too. Very few of us "locals" ever get to see what the ranch actually looks like!

Cassi, you are welcome. We had a great time in Montana. Everyone was great. I will be posting more pictures of the ranch and some of the activities, so check back in the next few days.

What a great prize! Not somewhere you'd ever get to see otherwise. I can accept snow in places that are supposed to be snowy.

Nice hotel/motel :D have fun

Sucio, it was the best prize. We just don't win things, so that is why we didn't believe it was real at first. I'm just glad it snowed for us on our last day. We just don't see that in Phoenix. Doo, we did, thanks. ~Adsila~

I want snow !

I hear you Max, we would love to have some here too.

Great trip! The dog sled ride would have been awesome! Now that looked really FUN! Debe Branning

I just found out I won the winter 2012 trip and I wanted to say thank you for your posts or I would have gone on thinking it was too good to be true. I sent my release forms back the same day and now I am just waiting for my dates. I am so exited.

You are going to have a blast.

WE JUST GOT OUR INVITE ON FRIDAY! WE ARE SO EXCITED. I WAS WONDERING WHAT FREEBIES THEY GIVE YOU?! I SAW ON SOME PREVIOUS TRIPS THAT THEY RECEIVED COWBOY BOOTS AND MY HUSBAND HAS ALWAYS WANTED A PAIR. DO THEY STILL GIVE YOU COWBOY BOOTS?

We went in the winter and got snow boots. I don't know if summer visitors get cowboy boots but we did get cowboy hats. It was a blast.

Excited as well! My Daughter and I got our winter 2012 invitation today too!!

Also got invited for Winter 2012! So excited to get paperwork back with dates

Going march 9! Super excited!!!

I'm leaving in two days. me and fiancee are looking forward to it!! we live in TX so montana will be a big change lol. i hope we have as much fun as you and your husband did!

Just got back from the ranch yesterday. Beets any vacation I've ever been on, and I've been on some great vacations. No cowboy boots are given in winter. My daughter and her husband got cowboy boots on a summer trip there. But the snow boots are really great. Pack lightly, you will need the extra room to bring back everything you get while there.

Looks like the Lincoln room we stayed in.

Just got my call from Marlboro, sounds awesome!!!!

Going July 15th! Cant wait!!

Hey there!! My best friend & I went on that trip in 2006 and stayed in that same room! Great trip! But my best friend and I had both had a crazy dream/vision the 1st night. Did you have any dreams about horses by any chance?

I don't remember having any unusual dreams. I am glad you had fun.

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Philip Morris sells its a 'Disneyland for smokers': 18,000 acre Marlboro Ranch - where 350 loyal customers have won all-expenses-paid trips since 1999 - is sold to owners of exclusive Yellowstone Club

• Philip Morris USA sold its 18,000-acre Montana property that was home to the Marlboro Ranch in June 
• Every year since 1999, 350 loyal customers have won an all-expense-paid trip to visit the 'Old Western Town' 
• The working ranch kept the Marlboro Man ads alive after new laws banned the billboards and commercials
• The Marlboro Ranch was had 20 buildings including a hotel, mining office, bank, sheriff's office and saloon
• Philip Morris USA sold the ranch to Lone Mountain Land Co - owners of the ultra-exclusive Yellowstone Club - but did not disclose how much the deal was worth
• Yellowstone Club counts celebrities including Tom Brady and Justin Timberlake among its members
• The new owners plan to continue running the ranch's cow-calf operation and guest ranch 

By Shannon Thaler For Dailymail.Com

Published: 14:32 EDT, 2 August 2021 | Updated: 17:02 EDT, 2 August 2021

View comments

Philip Morris has sold its 18,000-acre Montana  home of the Marlboro Ranch - dubbed a 'Disneyland for smokers' - to the owners of the ultra-exclusive Yellowstone Club. 

Marlboro Ranch, a working ranch with an 'Old Western Town' was bought by the tobacco giant in 1999 as a marketing tool. It was a Marlboro Man advertisement come to life - complete with cowboys in red shirts - and was open eight months a year as an all-expenses-paid vacation spot for loyal customers who could win trips by entering with the directions on the back of their cigarette pack.

The faux western town has 20 buildings including a two-story hotel, mining office, bank, sheriff's office, saloon and spa. 

The company did not reveal the sale price but the estate was bought by Lone Mountain Land Co - a private equity firm that also owns the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, which is noted as a private playground for the rich and famous. Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen, Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt are all said to own property on the site and pay $400,000 membership for access to its exclusive amenities and mountain trails.  

Philip Morris USA - the biggest cigarette maker in America - has sold its 18,000-acre Montana property dubbed a 'Disneyland for smokers'. Up until its closure, every year since its opening in 1999, loyal customers could win an all-expense-paid trip to visit the 'Old Western Town' for four days and three nights

The Marlboro Ranch was a faux western town complete with 20 buildings including a two-story hotel, mining office, bank, sheriff's office and saloon

Guests were greeted with a welcome basket on their beds filled with Stetson hats, cowboy boots, jackets, bandannas, digital cameras, sunglasses and ashtrays. In earlier years guests were also gifted a pack of cigarettes

The Marlboro Ranch's hotel hosted 350 guests annually up until its closure. Philip Morris USA's parent company, Altria, also used to hold board meetings there

Each new structure was made with reclaimed materials and furnished with antiques scavenged from around the region

Architect Nick Fullerton and his team carefully constructed the facades of each building so that they would hide modern plumbing and electrical wiring

In 1999 Philip Morris USA, a division of American tobacco corporation Altria, had to bid adieu to its Marlboro Man ads in the wake of new state laws against big tobacco companies. The working ranch in Clyde Park, a town of only 288 residents, kept the lore of the Marlboro Man alive. 

Competition winners would receive a duffel bag and cap before their flight to Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport. The hats helped travelers identify others headed to the ranch. 

Guests were welcomed to the rugged hotel with a basket filled with Stetson hats, cowboy boots, jackets, bandannas, digital cameras, sunglasses and ashtrays. In earlier years they were also gifted a pack of cigarettes. 

The architect behind the town, Nick Fullerton, said that the 90-minute drive from the airport to the town 'takes you out of this world that we're in today, and kind of prepares you for the sight once you get there'.

When Fullerton and his team were called to construct the town in 1999 they first salvaged the remains of crumbling homesteads on the property, then they built new structures and furnished them with antiques scavenged from around the region.  

In the winter there were snowshoe adventures with ice fishing, dog sledding and tubing and in the summer there were zip lines, archery lessons and wagon rides. 

Every part of the retreat was curated: employees dressed in red western shirts and cowboy boots picked up guests from the airport in a convoy of tour buses. More staff on horseback lined a stretch of road between the entrance gate and frontier town, waiting for a the convoy to pass so they could gallop after it and crack their whips to set the scene, leading guests onto the main street. 

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Diesel mechanic Christine Dorgan, 54, ordered a Marlboro watch, dart board and portable picnic table with the points from the back of her Marlboro cigarette packs. 

She was smoker since the age of 12 and quit in 2019 shortly before winning a trip to the Marlboro Ranch from a sweepstakes. Dorgan told the Wall Street Journal : 'I signed up for that thing I don't know how many times. I wanted to see a real cowboy.'

The pandemic delayed Dorgan's trip to the wild west and now she will never be able to go. A decline in cigarette smoking has shut the ranch down for good.  

In present day, in the wake of Marlboro's losses and a $12.8billion investment in the e-cigarette startup Juul, Philip Morris parent company Altria's CEO Howard Willard has also stepped down. The US government filed an antitrust suit against Altria to unwind the deal.  

Fullerton constructed parts of the town with salvaged remains of the crumbling homesteads left on the property when it was first purchased in 1999 

The ranch operated as a customer retreat eight months out of the year. It shuts down in the winter during snowfall and at the end of winter while there's melting slush

The faux 'Old Western Town' is located in Clyde Park, Montana, a real town with only 288 residents

The tobacco company had to bid adieu to its Marlboro Man ads in the wake of new state laws against big tobacco companies but the working ranch kept the Marlboro Man and all the other cowboys, horses and snowy peaks of the Rockies alive

Any future development would be possible because that portion of Park County isn't zoned. Clyde Park residents have expressed concern that Lone Mountain would build a residential development or heliskiing operation. 

However, Sam Byrne, the cofounder of Lone Mountain's parent company CrossHarbor Capital Partners, assured in a press release on June 30 that the new owners only have plans 'to be thoughtful stewards of the land and good members of the community'. 

'Lone Mountain Land Company will continue to operate the ranch’s cow-calf operation and guest ranch.'

Thirteen of the ranch's 100 full-time employees were retained and Lone Mountain has plans to hire more staff.   

The ranch is surrounded by 18,000 acres of secluded grassland and cattle. Fullerton said the 90-minute drive from the airport to the town 'takes you out of this world that we're in today, and kind of prepares you for the sight once you get there'

When guests arrived, employees on horseback waited along a stretch of road between the entrance gate and the frontier town and a dispatcher radios the riders, telling them when to gallop out from behind trees to crack their whips and lead guests down the slope onto main street

New owners Lone Mountain Land Co have assured residents that they do not have plans to build residential or heliskiing developments but instead to continue to run the ranch's cow-calf operation and guest ranch

• Sale of Marlboro Ranch Snuffs Out Smokers¿ Vacation Dreams - WSJ
• Sale of Marlboro Ranch Snuffs Out Smokers’ Vacation Dreams - WSJ

Share or comment on this article: Marlboro sells 18,000 acre Montana ranch to private equity firm behind exclusive Yellowstone Club

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Minding Ag's Business

Marlboro cigarette maker sells 18,000-acre montana ranch.

Earlier this week, DTN put the spotlight on farmland when we discussed the outlook for cash rents in 2022 and ways farmers can tip negotiations in their favor to control the impact to their bottoms in our "Keep the Good Times Rolling Series." You can read that story here: https://www.dtnpf.com/… .

While we think cash rent conversations this fall will be an important part of farmers' ability to set themselves up for profitability, another large land sale caught our eye this week. Marlboro cigarette maker Altria Group Inc. (through its better-known subsidiary Philip Morris USA) sold its 18,000-acre cow-calf operation and dude ranch near Clyde Park, Montana.

Marlboro's Crazy Mountain Ranch was often used for corporate events as well as a prize in annual contests for loyal customers. Who wouldn't want an all-expenses-paid trip to a beautiful Montana ranch complete with an Old Western Town with 20 buildings, including a saloon, hotel and spa? One of the largest properties in the area, locals generally regarded the dude ranch "as a quirky but generally benign and light-on-the-landscape operation that was hit pretty hard by COVID-19," according to a Montana Free Press article exploring the future of the Crazy Mountains. (You can read that fascinating history here: https://montanafreepress.org/… . )

The buyer is a subsidiary of privately-owned investment and asset management firm Cross Harbor Capital Partners, and its reputation is a bit more complicated. The private equity firm bought the Yellowstone Club out of bankruptcy in 2009, and over the course of six years, converted it to a residential resort subdivision where properties sell for $2,500 to $3,000 per square foot. Cross Harbor also owns two other luxury communities in the area, and since Marlboro's ranch is in a part of the county that isn't zoned, there are concerns about similar development. The equity firm has also been party to several controversial proposed land swaps with the U.S. Forest Service, according to the Montana Land Source. (You can read that here: https://mtlandsource.com/… . )

Cross Harbor says its subsidiary, Lone Mountain Land Company, has no plans for a residential subdivision or a commercial heliskiing operation.

"Lone Mountain Land Company will continue to operate the ranch's cow-calf operation and guest ranch," Sam Byrne, managing partner and co-founder at Cross Harbor Capital Partners, said in a news release. "We look forward to working with our neighbors, the Clyde Park community, and the Forest Service to be thoughtful stewards of the land and good members of the community."

Details of the deal have not been made public.

Is anyone else anxiously awaiting the next season of Kevin Costner's television series "Yellowstone?" This all sounds eerily similar.

Katie Dehlinger can be reached at [email protected]

Follow her on Twitter at @KatieD_DTN

Katie Dehlinger can be reached at [email protected]

Follow her on Twitter @KatieD_DTN

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MARLBORO RANCH FAQ

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Phillip Morris sells sprawling Marlboro Ranch to resort operator

Marlboro Ranch in Montana (Crazy Mountain Ranch)

Cigarette maker Philip Morris USA has sold its sprawling Marlboro Ranch property in Montana after more than two decades of ownership.

The cigarette-maker, which is owned by Altria Group, bought the 18,000-acre ranch in 1999, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the sale. A price was not given.

The buyer was Lone Mountain Land Co., a private equity firm that owns other resorts in the state, including the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky.

Philip Morris hosted corporate events there and over the years offered all-expenses-paid trips to the ranch to thousands of loyal Marlboro smokers, according to the Journal.

States like Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and other Western locales have seen a surge in homebuyers during the pandemic, as urbanites paid big money for more space .

The uptick in demand for ranches and other large properties has also pushed up prices for those compounds, which can have hundreds or thousands of acres.

Marlboro Ranch was known as Crazy Mountain Ranch before Philip Morris USA bought and renamed the property. It’s a working ranch with myriad hospitality facilities, including an “Old Western Town” with a saloon, hotel rooms, an events barn, and a spa. Because every Old West town had a spa.

Activities available to guests included horseback riding, cattle driving, snowmobiling, clay pigeon shooting, and fly fishing .

Lone Mountain Land said it would operate the cow-calf operation on the ranch as well as its hospitality business.

Contact Dennis Lynch

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Order your copy now: “The New Kings of New York” has arrived

my son just won a trip to the Marlborough Crazy Mountain Ranch. Does anybody know anything about it?

Hello my wife just won the trip to the ranch also Can anyone tell how there trip was? we will be going in the winter and what to expect in the coming months before the trip. thanks.

You go to achilles marlboro forums and they will tell you everything,

Tripadvisor staff removed this post because it did not meet Tripadvisor's forum guideline with regards to harassment of another user.

Anyone else find all this Marlboro Ranch contest talk inappropriate for Tripadvisor? You have to win a contest, and it's only open to smokers. So most of us are not even eligible, and have no interest in this. The people who post all seem to be "one-timers."

Someone mentioned a dedicated forum for questions about Marlboro Ranch---here's the link and please take your questions and "I'm going too" talk there:

http://www.achillies.com/marlborostuff/index.php

And rememeber that if you do "win" you have to pay income tax on the value of the "prize". I beleive they give you some cash that is supposed to cover that. You'll have to pay tax on that too.

If the ranch would spend half as much on cancer research as they do on giving away trips to this ranch, we'd all be a lot better off.

This post was determined to be inappropriate by the Tripadvisor community and has been removed.

If that is your idea of a "trip of a lifetime", I'd say you have a pretty limited view of travel.

"Free drinks, free cigs, free gear" isn't what makes a good trip for me.

And it is not "free" because you have to pay income tax. So the person above paid $600 in taxes. I can have a pretty wonderful time with my friends (camping) for far less.

My point is that this is not something that many people here are interested in. All this "I am going too" talk is, frankly, tiresome. There is a dedicated website where you smokers can talk about this. It is not something that most of us here can even consider.

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Welcome to Marlboro Country: Philip Morris Stakes a Last Claim in the West

The iconic cowboy disappeared from television decades ago. But with the help of a Montana dude ranch, the cigarette company is keeping his legend alive.

The invitation reached Rachel Munyon as she returned home to her California apartment one evening in December 2011. Ripping open the cardboard flap of the thick Fed-Ex express envelope, she pulled out a letter.

"Congratulations!" it read: she was a winner in Marlboro's "Rock the Ranch" sweepstakes. All she had to do was fill out the enclosed paperwork and submit to a background check, and she and one guest of her choice would be heading off on a four-day, all-expense-paid ranch vacation. "I just started screaming and freaking out and, like, jumping up and down," she told me.

Rachel called her boyfriend to share the news, and later that night, the two went out to dinner and completed the stack of forms. Several weeks later, they received a package with their finalized itineraries, round-trip plane tickets, a check for the associated taxes, and a pair of MasterCard gift cards to cover the cost of checking luggage. Then came a box holding two red-and-black wheeled duffel bags.

In February, the couple boarded a flight to southern Montana, wearing baseball caps emblazoned with the logo of the Crazy Mountain Ranch.They would join roughly a hundred other guests from across the country, some of the thousands who arrive each year for a luxury stay in the heart of the Rockies, courtesy of Philip Morris USA.

Though most of Marlboro's domestic tobacco is grown in the silt of Appalachia, the brand has long carried a flavor of the American West. The marketing concept goes back to the 1950s, when Philip Morris added filter tips to the product line in response to the first studies linking smoking and lung cancer. Early market research suggested that the public viewed filters as effective but effeminate, and Marlboro, which for decades had been sold as a premium ladies' cigarette, needed a way to stand out from a new set of competitors.

Philip Morris turned to the Chicago-based Leo Burnett agency, whose advertisers dropped Marlboro's price point and long-time "Mild as May" slogan, and staged a new campaign featuring icons of male autonomy: sun-cured men repairing cars, cleaning guns, cupping a flame in tattooed hands, or squinting into the distance over whirls of smoke.

Sales increased 3,241 percent in 1955, the year the new ads rolled out. Those featuring the cowboy -- "an almost universal symbol of admired masculinity," as Leo Burnett wrote to Philip Morris's advertising director in a letter outlining the campaign -- drew the strongest response.

By the early 1960s, just before the Surgeon General's advisory committee issued its verdict on the health risks of smoking, the theme had evolved into the mythical "Marlboro Country," where cowboys in white hats rode horseback between golden grass and blue skies, or sat around a campfire with an open red-topped pack posed next to the crackling flames. The message beckoned over airwaves and from newspaper pages: "Come to where the flavor is."

Then the ads disappeared -- first from broadcast media after Congress passed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act in 1970, and later from billboards and other outdoor spaces as part of the Master Settlement Agreement in the late 1990s. When the FDA won regulatory control over the tobacco industry a few years ago, the agency tightened limits on the sale of branded merchandise and banned sponsorships of sporting and entertainment events. Tobacco companies also pulled campaigns from many print publications to comply with rules against targeting youth.

As traditional advertising avenues were cut off one by one, Philip Morris started to develop more-direct methods of customer outreach. In the early 1970s, a Marlboro chuck wagon toured the state fair circuit, serving up sourdough biscuits and publicity. The next decade saw the development of the company's customer database, a repository of smoker information drawn from bar giveaways and event signups.

Then in the 1990s, with the Master Settlement looming and the lobby for FDA regulation underway, attention shifted to an emerging business strategy known as "relationship marketing." Where traditional marketing emphasized individual sales, this new model traded in human economics:investments in individual customers, through direct communication and rewards, could pay off in long-term loyalty and word-of-mouth promotion . And so, in the spirit of new enterprise, Marlboro again looked West.

Crazy Mountain Ranch is settled beneath the eponymous range -- named, legend goes, after a madwoman who disappeared in its jagged slopes during Westward expansion. Peaks cut into the sky like sawteeth. The ranch's lodge-pole entrance gate straddles grassy foothills about 30 miles northwest of Livingston, Montana, an hour and a half from the nearest commercial airport, at the end of a gravel road that curls like smoke around the rises. Nick Fullerton, the architect who designed the original guest facilities, says that the drive "takes you out of this world that we're in today, and kind of prepares you for the sight once you get there."

The dude operation, surrounded by 18,000 acres of secluded grassland and a working cattle outfit, was known as Deadrock Guest Ranch until Philip Morris bought the place from the publishing entrepreneur Glenn Patch in 2000. Patch had borrowed the name "Deadrock" from the fictional town in the novels of Tom McGuane -- who owns a ranch just over the county line -- for his own creative venture: a full-scale recreation of a 19th-century frontier settlement. He hired Fullerton for the task in the early 1990s. The architect's team hauled together the remains of a few crumbling homesteads on the property, and rigged new structures with reclaimed materials and antique furnishings scavenged from around the region. The town, which Philip Morris later expanded, features some 20 buildings -- including a saloon, a two-story hotel, and a stone jail -- with period facades hiding modern plumbing and electrical wiring.

The ranch operates as a customer retreat eight months out of the year, shutting down during the cold, gray stretch before the first snow falls and again while grass fights through the melting slush. Every rugged detail is carefully calibrated. Employees dressed in red western shirts and cowboy boots pick up guests and their duffel bags from the airport in a convoy of tour buses. More employees, on horseback, wait along a stretch of road between the entrance gate and the frontier town. A dispatcher radios the riders after the convoy passes through the gate, and when the first bus crests the hill just before town, they gallop out from behind trees, whips cracking, to lead guests down the slope onto main street.

When Rachel and her boyfriend arrived in the ice of February, the horses were stabled, but the buses were met by more employees in red shirts and boots who carried their bags into private rooms. Each bed was piled with gifts: a Stetson hat, boots, wool socks, a heavy and light jacket, and five packs of each guest's preferred Marlboro-brand cigarettes, selected in the pre-trip paperwork. (The pile used to include a number of smaller gifts, but the ranch recently switched to a system of wooden tokens, good for $150, which can be used to "purchase" digital cameras, coffee mugs, t-shirts, and other souvenirs at the General Store.) The only place guests could spend their own money was inside the saloon bathroom, where a quarter-fed vending machine dispensed pain medication.

Depending on the season, daytime activities at the ranch include trips to nearby Yellowstone Park, skeet shooting, river rafting, scenic horseback rides, and cross-country skiing. During their winter visit, Rachel and her boyfriend mushed a dog sled, rode a zip line between stands of Ponderosa pines, and spent a day snowmobiling on the upper bounds of the property. "I was calling my mom every day saying, I can't believe this, it's getting better! " she said. After gourmet dinners, guests gathered for parties in the saloon with live music, entertainment, and an open bar. One night,employees built a bonfire on an outdoor patio and passed out skewers of chicken and rattlesnake meat, while wood and tobacco plumes twisted toward the stars.

Rachel discovered the Crazy Mountain Ranch eight years ago, when she turned 21 and logged onto Marlboro's Web site for the first time. She'd started smoking Marlboro Menthols when she was 17, but Philip Morris, like all the major U.S. tobacco companies, restricts direct marketing communications to smokers 21 or older -- a voluntary measure, according to the company, to prevent contact with an underage audience. (The site's age-verification form, which requires each visitor to enter his or her name, address, last four social-security digits, and preferred smoke or smokeless product, is also a funnel to the mailing list.)

On the site, Rachel came across a gallery of ranch photos, showing people having fun against a backdrop of beautiful scenery. She had never been to Montana, but had always loved Western movies and cowboys. The site shared few details about how to visit, though, and none of the friends or family members she asked had heard about the place. Then out one night in early 2011, she met a guy whose girlfriend had won a trip and brought him along. He raved about the experience, and Rachel was mesmerized. She scoured the web for information in past winners' blogs, and started placing daily calls to Marlboro's 800 number, bombarding the customer service representatives with her interest in going.After almost a year of persistence, she received a form for the limited-entry Rock the Ranch sweepstakes.

Marlboro selects other winners straight from the customer database, in a process David Sylvia, a spokesman for Altria Group -- the parent company of Philip Morris USA -- would describe only as "more thought than randomness." Mike, an IT consultant from Alabama whose friend Shawn received an unsolicited invitation seven years ago and invited him as a guest, thought at first that the offer must be a scam. Shawn had signed up for a Marlboro promotion at a bar one night in college, about 10 years before, but had since quit smoking. Now he was being offered the vacation of a lifetime, for free?

"It sounded too good to be true," Mike told me. "There's a catch. We're going to get out there, and they're going to try to sell us a timeshare, or there's going to be some brainwashing session for Philip Morris." He completed the required paperwork and packed his things in the red luggage that arrived one day in the mail. But, he said, "I think I was still skeptical until we got on the plane."

He arrived at the ranch to find scarcely a trace of the Marlboro brand.The ranch property isn't exempt from federal or state regulations, like the law that any object featuring the brand -- right down to the dinner menus -- must also carry a warning from the Surgeon General. But Philip Morris also seems to avoid subtler opportunities to push their products,even asking employees who smoke to take cigarette breaks in an alley between buildings, out of guests' sight.

Mike's suspicions faded as he shot clay pigeons, tried out a branding iron, and hiked with Shawn through the mountains. "In retrospect, and prior, certainly, to going on the trip, I just kept going over in my mind: what could possibly be their motive for doing this?" he said. "During the trip itself, it was not really something that was on your mind, just because you're having so much fun."

This hands-off approach, of course, has its own marketing role. Tobacco companies have traditionally hitched their brands to abstract concepts, appealing to the desires and aspirations of their intended audiences as much as to their taste preferences. Relationship marketing, which exploded at the close of the 20th century, presented an opportunity to relate those ideas without the frame of a television screen or magazine spread. Camel targeted its base of trend-conscious urbanites with a "VIP Club" whose members could access special travel deals and product discounts. Virginia Slims, whose cigarettes were usually featured in ads dangling from the fingertips of attractive, fashionable young women, solicited sweepstakes entries for a $50,000 shopping spree.

Marlboro bought up acreage. "One of the core elements of the Marlboro brand are these ideas of spirit, freedom, and adventure," Sylvia said. "The goal of the ranch out in Montana is to really allow the consumers to really experience those elements firsthand."

Internal documents made public as part of the Master Settlement Agreement explain Marlboro's own stake. In the two years prior to the purchase of the Crazy Mountain Ranch, Philip Morris had rented Patch's land -- along with another ranch in Montana's Gallatin Valley and a third in Arizona -- for occasional smoker promotions. Company communications discussing future marketing strategies refer to the success of the ranch promotions in developing loyalty and conversation among those most coveted demographic groups: young smokers and their friends.

"This program generated news and excitement among young adult smokers," one executive wrote to Marlboro's vice president in a memo discussing the planned ranch purchase. According to post-trip surveys, ranch visits increased the likelihood that both winners and guests -- particularly those between 21 and 29 -- would purchase Marlboro in the future. Trip winners also went on to purchase Marlboro significantly more often than other types of cigarettes. The vast majority of visitors reported leaving the ranch with an improved image of the brand, and a high likelihood of telling their friends back home about the experience. (Both winners and guests must be 21 or older to be eligible for the trip, but Sylvia declined to comment on whether the invitations target young customers in particular.)

Marlboro has become the top player in the American tobacco market -- controlling 43 percent of retail as of 2012 -- with a strong base of young and loyal customers. Marty Barrington, the CEO of Altria Group, announced at a consumer conference last fall that Marlboro had outscored every major competitor for brand equity -- a measure of customers' likelihood to choose a product over similar options in the marketplace.

He also highlighted the "excellent demographics" of Marlboro smokers: the brand's share of 21- to 29-year-olds is higher than those of the two largest competitors combined. While the approximate retail value for sweepstakes prizes in the last few years has been roughly $5,000, a single pack-a-day smoker can contribute tens of thousands of dollars to Big Tobacco's coffers over a lifetime, even after discounting federal and state taxes -- and before adding revenue from new customers drawn in by extension.

And if the Crazy Mountain Ranch offers Marlboro rare sanctuary from pressures beyond the fence, it does no less for those who visit. Most states have passed laws against lighting up in restaurants, workplaces, or bars. Smokers are gouged by excise taxes while their habit is decried by public health campaigns. In the frontier town, cigarette smoke is invisible in ubiquity -- a relief, for some, from attention off the property, which may threaten sales more than any advertising ban. Although Rachel said she understands the social stigma against smoking, and doesn't plan to be a smoker for the rest of her life, she enjoyed the brief respite offered by the Crazy Mountain Ranch."If I'm out shopping, [or] leaving a restaurant, I don't smoke till I get to my car," Rachel said. "Because you do get looked at a lot. It's hard."

Her experience reflects a changing market, one that clouds the outlook for cigarette promotions like the ranch. "The rate of cigarette smoking in the United States has been declining for over 30 years, and we expect that it will continue to decline," David Sylvia told me. A recent Gallup poll found that just one in five adults reported smoking in the previous week. That rate that has never been lower -- it's less than half of what it was when Marlboro's cowboy first gazed past the camera. Philip Morris's cigarette sales flat-lined last year, just above a three percent industry-wide decline.

In October 2011, with business flagging, Altria announced a plan to cut $400 million in costs, primarily in "cigarette-related infrastructure," by the end of this year. Opportunity is rich overseas: in 2008, Altria spun off its foreign operations to free them of U.S. legal and image entanglements, and Philip Morris International has been reaching into markets like China, where some 40 percent of the world's cigarettes are produced and smoked.

But "cigarette smoking still is legal in this country," Sylvia said, "and Philip Morris USA will continue to try to market in a responsible way so that when adults who do smoke decide which brands to choose, that they'll choose Marlboro."

Along with the rest of the industry, Philip Morris has been emphasizing the small but growing smokeless category, and some companies are expanding into new territory altogether (Lorillard, one of Altria's major competitors, recently purchased a company that manufactures electronic cigarettes). According to Sylvia, "One of our goals is to find ways to reduce the harm related to tobacco use. What that means for the long term, for the Marlboro brand, and thus the Marlboro ranch? It's hard to say."

The pursuit of free land in the West is, after all, a dated idea. The U.S. Census Bureau declared the frontier closed in 1890, and the Crazy Mountain Ranch is marked with the footprints of earlier pioneers: stretched out in the southern shadow of the Crazies, where William Clark passed on his return journey from the Pacific coast, its buildings raised from fallen ones. But for now, the parties and the promise carry on in Marlboro Country, as the sun burns down into the western horizon, glowing orange and then extinguished.

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Phillip Morris sells sprawling Marlboro Ranch to resort operator

Cigarette maker Philip Morris USA has sold its sprawling Marlboro Ranch property in Montana after more than two decades of ownership.

The cigarette-maker, which is owned by Altria Group, bought the 18,000-acre ranch in 1999, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the sale. A price was not given.

The buyer was Lone Mountain Land Co., a private equity firm that owns other resorts in the state, including the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky.

Philip Morris hosted corporate events there and over the years offered all-expenses-paid trips to the ranch to thousands of loyal Marlboro smokers, according to the Journal.

States like Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and other Western locales have seen a surge in homebuyers during the pandemic, as urbanites paid big money for more space .

The uptick in demand for ranches and other large properties has also pushed up prices for those compounds, which can have hundreds or thousands of acres.

Marlboro Ranch was known as Crazy Mountain Ranch before Philip Morris USA bought and renamed the property. It’s a working ranch with myriad hospitality facilities, including an “Old Western Town” with a saloon, hotel rooms, an events barn, and a spa. Because every Old West town had a spa.

Activities available to guests included horseback riding, cattle driving, snowmobiling, clay pigeon shooting, and fly fishing .

Lone Mountain Land said it would operate the cow-calf operation on the ranch as well as its hospitality business.

[ WSJ ] — Dennis Lynch

The post Phillip Morris sells sprawling Marlboro Ranch to resort operator appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles .

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• 10 July 2021
• The Real Deal
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