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HOUSE TOUR | ROOMS & GARDENS | WORLD OF CABANA
In the heart of Wyoming, Anna Sullivan resurrects the T Cross 'Dude Ranch', blending Old West grit with midcentury charm. Together with designer Cecelia Heffernan, she restores historic cabins, salvages century-old treasures, and turns the legendary 160-acre ranch into a timeless escape under the American sky.
BY LISA FLOOD | ROOMS & GARDENS | 29 SEPTEMBER 2025
Forty lodgepole and hide chairs and loungers—hand-made by cowboys nearly a century ago and shredded to ribbons by pack rats—tangled with rustic bedsteads, antler lamps, and horse harnesses inside an old barn. For Anna Sullivan, that heap of forgotten history wasn’t just debris but the beginning of a love story with Dubois, Wyoming’s T Cross Dude Ranch. Together with Jackson Hole designer, Cecelia Heffernan, Anna Sullivan set out on a monumental task to restore not only the ranch's furniture, but the soul of the historic landmark she and her husband, Steve, had purchased eight years ago.
Reaching the T Cross, a 160-acre ranch listed on the National Historic Register, is a half-hour drive down mostly a rough road from Welty’s—the general store that opens only when someone presses a nose to the glass. First homesteaded at the turn of last century by a rumored cattle rustler, the ranch hides in a valley, surrounded by the Shoshone National Forest and near the Washakie Wilderness, just shy of Yellowstone, the largest sweep of untamed land left in the lower 48.
“Some of my friends told me not to buy it,” Sullivan recalls. But she believed she was meant to own this storied ranch—a favorite of the East Coast social set since the 1920s, when guests known as “dudes” paid to experience the romance of the Old West.
Throughout the Rockies, dude ranches like T Cross invited city slickers to live the dream: sleep in cabins, fish wild rivers, ride with cowboys, and gather around campfires beneath the skies bright stars. In many ways, dude ranching is a uniquely American invention. Theodore Roosevelt is often considered the first “dude,” paying in 1880 for the chance to live and work alongside ranchers in the Dakota Territory. By the 1920s, dude ranches flourished, attracting prominent American families seeking rugged authenticity.
In the 1950s, Sullivan’s father—a famed newspaperman from Richmond, Virginia—often journeyed West, frequenting Wyoming ranches such as the CM and the R Lazy S. “Later, I visited ranches with my father and aunt Polly as a kid,” Sullivan says “Dude ranching was in my history.” Sullivan’s father long dreamed of buying a ranch out West.
“We looked for years but never found one,” Sullivan says. After his death, Sullivan had a chance to purchase the T Cross. A frequent guest at a neighboring ranch, she knew the area well, and the value of protecting it. A long-time conservationist, Sullivan had spent years working to protect land throughout the West and specifically around the Yellowstone ecosystem, home to the T Cross. When the first buyer’s offer fell through, Sullivan bought the ranch. “In my heart of hearts, I believed I’d get it,” she says.
Heffernan, who has spent three decades shaping the design scene in Jackson Hole, approached the project as a historian and a romantic. “We mixed midcentury with Old West,” she explains, “because that blend was true to the ranch’s heyday in the 1940s.” Out went the mismatched, newer furnishings left by previous owners.
In came early Navajo rugs, lodgepole bedsteads, old Pendleton blankets, vintage photographs, a pair of wooden horse head lamps, and of course all the rescued and restored cowboy chairs. Lace curtains from Anna’s grandmother hang in the cabin windows. “We wanted people to feel like they’d stepped back in time,” Heffernan says. “This is history, and we wanted guests to feel it.”
Heffernan’s vision came not only from years of experience out West, but from films like Lonesome Dove and Legends of the Fall—that cinematic West where romance and grit entwine. She understood the essence of a classic dude ranch.
Across the ranch’s nine restored cabins, she insisted on rustic originals, nostalgic details, and creature comforts—good mattresses, thick towels—the hallmarks of an American style born more than a century ago. “I’m always in search of the Old West,” she says. “And you can find it at T Cross.”
Indeed, T Cross remains a place where history, western style, and landscape fuse. Bears, wolves, elk, deer, moose, and the occasional mountain lion frequent the property. Geologists claim the rock walls tell creation stories older than memory.
When Sullivan is not preparing cabins for guests, she can be found fishing, hiking, or simply sitting on a cabin porch, soaking in the quiet. In return for all her hard work, the ranch offers its own kind of magic—especially at night, when the darkness is complete, save for the stars. “It’s black except for the stars,” Sullivan says softly. “There are so many, you can’t believe the sky could look like that.
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