The E Bar L Ranch, near Greenough 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 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 forty 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.”
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, and bruised from firing shotguns, 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.
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.