Cody Rancher Is in Movies
Success Marked Up in Many Productions
CODY, Wyo. – Leonard Morris seems destined to go a long way toward fame in the movie world. He has just returned from Hollywood where he has been playing parts and bits in 80 different pictures the past few months. Last winter was the second season for Morris in Hollywood. He spent several months there the season before last.
When Morris is at home he is a dude ranch. He owns a fine ranch near Cody on the Northfork known as the Lazy Bar H ranch.
During his career as a movie actor he has appeared in such well-known pictures as "Public Enemy," "Secret Six," "Strangers May Kiss," "Connecticut Yankee," and scores of others.
 Morris states that a new picture is to be filmed called, "The Life of Buffalo Bill." Temporarily this production has been shelved, but production may commence at any time, Morris will play an important role in this picture, it is said, Tim McCoy of Thermopolis is also slated for a part in it. He expects to be called back to Hollywood at any time.
Morris is a Cody product, and his home friends are hopeful of his success in the movies. He is a graduate of the local schools. During his high school career he was an outstanding athlete.
Casper Tribune – Herald
May 24, 1931
Fred Morris Wanders Back Home
By Evelyn Shawver
 Fred Morris, rancher pioneer, is in cody this week to complete the sale of his well-known Northfork ranch situated at the base of the Pinnacle mountain, 17 miles from Cody. For nearly 45 years this ranch has been one of the most popular dude ranches in this part of the country. Its owner was the first man to go East to solicit touist trade. He was also the first to protest (unsuccessfully) to the use of the word "dude."
Cody Enterprise
July 2, 1953
The Buffalo Bill Country
When John Colter, Jim Bridger, Lewis and Clark, and other intrepid western explorers reached that section of the Northwest occupied by the Absaroka Mountains and what later became the Shoshone National Forest, they became wary, and the reason for this was that they hardly knew from one moment to the next when they would bump into a band of Indians only too ready to indicate y rather unmistakable – not to say extreme means, their hostility to any encroachment upon their domain by the white man.
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So the explores were followed by the miners, and the miners were followed by the rancher, who found here conditions so perfect that fortune smiled immediately and without any coaxing.
 Buffalo Bill Cody who knew the west from Kansas to the Canadian border as few other men knew it, chose a site on the Sough Fork of the Shoshone River for his home ranch – the T E – and although the illustrious colonel joined the Indians and the buffalo in the happy hunting ground a good many years ago, the T E Ranch is still down there on the South Fork – on of the show places of the entire region.
Up on the North Fork he built his hunting lodge and long after the buffalo disappeared from the plains to the East and South he found live targets for his superhuman marksmanship with pistol and rifle. The little settlement where the ranchers came t trade grew and prospered, and quite naturally acquired the name "Cody, Wyoming" which it was borne with distinction these many years, meanwhile growing up to be a sizeable modern city whose name and location are probably better known than any place of like size in the world.
But to get back to the ranches and the ranchers. Guests came from time to time as guests will, and succumbed to the charm of this favored section of lofty mountains, immense forests, flowered valleys, fast-flowing trout streams and beautiful lakes. The Burlington Railroad was extended to Cody and the ideal climatic, scenic and recreational advantages of the region became better known. Lucky were those eastern people who numbered a rancher among their friends and won an invitation to come out for a vacation.
Lazy Bar H Ranch
A summer and winter resort of Old Time Western atmosphere and modern convenience, located at the elevation of 6100 feet in the Absaroka Range of the Rocky Mountains, only 25 miles from the Eastern Entrance of the Yellowstone Park and an equal distance from Cody – one of the few remaining typical Western towns.
 The ranch house, although only two-tens of a mile from the famous "Cody Road" to Yellowstone, is not visible from the highway and affords perfect privacy and complete quiet for the visitor. It is of log construction, one of the largest of its kind in the West, with dining room, lounge, reading and writng rooms and guest accommodation with private bath, all electrically lighted. The entire ranch house is typical of Western life, with its Navajo rugs, Indian curios, hunting trophies, huge fireplaces and unusually comfortable furnishings.
Guest accommodations are: rooms with bath in the main ranch house; detached single cabins with bath; double cabins with connecting bath; cabins with lavatory and connecting bath… all having porches and electric light.
The aim of the ranch is to make the guests happy among real Western folk. The service is attentive, but not obtrusive. Home cooked meals, served family style, an abundance of fresh vegetable, fruits, real milk and cream – and the purest of mountain water, icy cold, coming from a spring on the ranch premises.
Entertainment includes horseback riding, mountain climbing, motoring, camping, shooting, hunting, fishing and Rodeo. There is no extra charge for instruction in riding or target shooting. Pack trips or saddle horse trips for boys, girls or mixed groups may be arranged at special prices, to the Jackson Hole country, Cooke City, Grasshopper Glacier and Yellowstone Park.
One of the specialties of the ranch is beg game hunting, for elk, deer, bear, moose, mountain sheep and for antelope in certain years. Hunting and pack trips may be taken in easy stages for parties, which include ladies, and Mr. Morris personally, takes charge of all trips. For information regarding licenses, open season and rates, address the ranch.
Birth Pangs of "Dude Business"
told by wife Early Wrangler
Present Day Comforts were Lacking but
Rugged Western Hospitality Was Abundant
Far Cry from Conditions of 1934
By Mrs. EOA C. BROWN
Only an unrecognized and dwindling minority of present-day residents of the Buffalo Bill Dude Ranch country can turn an inward eye back to the necessary thirty-forty years, t call into being the frontier land that gave birth to the present day buxom and flourishing "Dude Business."
A pity I can't vision it for you as it recurs to me!
A few and universally known old time ranches were scattered from hell to breakfast over a vast area connected by almost impassible roads that wandered in serpentine inconsequence around natural barriers, seeking the level of least resistance, fording creeks and rivers in high water and low and disregarding all rocks and gullies that a stout, springless lumber wagon could be hauled over or through.
No fences or gates interfered with freedom of transit or the fancy of the drier Every man carried a six gun on one hip, a bottle on the other and a warm and hearty welcome in each fist for the rare and infrequent stranger.
The small log houses were shingled with dirt through which the mud flowed in unquenchable rivulets during the Spring season of melting snows and revived through chilly rains.
Talk about the "gold old times!" So they were – the romantic, colorful times of the survival of the fittest; when only the lone wolves and bear cubs of the human race were sturdy enough to bare their teeth in the face of Privation or Destitution and bend conditions to their service!
But in spite of the dirt roof often leaking, of the dirt floor always carefully wetted down to keep the dust from rising to obliterate and suffocate the inmates, the home-made bunks were wide enough for any number of visitors and gurb-line riders; and an abundance of wild game, fish, potatoes (and often little else!) sustained the frontier reputation for hospitality. It was against frontier etiquette to inquire a man's business or where he came from, but aside from this, there were few conventions or formalities.
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When it came to outfitting for a hunting trip, a dude was treated as well as themselves. No worse, no better. A good tent and cowboy bed of sour and heavy "sogans"' a frying pan and dutch-oven with a few rusty tin dishes; a sack of beans, some flour, coffee, sugar and salt and, if the tenderfoot looked like a mammy's boy who needed petting, a sack of potatoes might be added, though, an one oldy timer truthfully remarked: "potatoes are 80 per cent water and there isn't a damned bit of sense in packing water out there where the rivers are full of it."
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The dude ranch business really began a vague outline when women started to accompany their husbands bands west, either to hunt or to stay at the ranches until the hunt was concluded. It then became evident even to the most hard-boiled and conservative rancher that a little more in the way of comfort was a necessity for such profitable guests. And comforts came. Slowly, at first, then more and more rapidly. Cabins were enlarged or built separately; "store" furniture appeared a piece at a time. (I still own and cherish the first rocking chair that bumped, atop a load of provisions, over the South Fork trail. Alas, it retains but a shadow of it's former glory as even the cowhide seat and back that replaced the original cane seat and back, has given way to modern imitation leather.)
Rivers were bridged, roads somewhat smoothed and barbed wire fenced out the freedom and happy privations of an earlier period. School M'ams appeared, to settle down in the light of some sourdough's fireside to raise the young, progressive dude wranglers of today.
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Progress in growth, in methods and results cannot be denied but it must be admitted that much of the west. Progress in growth, in methods and results cannot be denied but it must be admitted that much of the romance, the glamour and the joy of living that characterized dude wrangling thirty years ago, as disappeared, never to return.
Cody Enterprise American Legion Special
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