Revel in the Warmth & Kinship of Our Wild West Family
Meet the Van Berkums. They have owned and operated the Rainbow Trout Ranch for over thirty years and they truly love what they do.
For three decades, Doug and Linda ran the ranch with their son David and his wife Jane. Theirs is a wonderful legacy which included three on-ranch and three often-on-ranch grandchildren. The opportunity Doug and Linda provided for their six grandchildren to grow up working in the dude ranch environment is impossible to measure.
In 2023 Doug and Linda chose to step back, leaving David and Jane to run the ranch with the help of family, and Tim and Ms. Meg Dyer, long-time dude-ranch colleagues who have fit right in. The Van Berkums and the Dyers love welcoming guests into their western home. As Doug always said “folks feel right at home here at the ranch. We have folks that come in as strangers and leave as friends planning their next year’s vacation with us together. It is one of the great pleasures of the dude ranch industry.”
Tim, David, Jane and Ms. Meg on a typical Friday (we wear pink on Fridays in support of the fight against breast cancer)
When you call or email, you will most likely get Jane, Caroline or Ms. Meg and we will be so happy to help you plan your Rainbow Trout Ranch vacation. Jane has always said that if she didn’t live the lifestyle anyway, she would certainly take her family on a dude ranch vacation. It is a truly multi-generational outdoor adventure family vacation and it has been wonderful to welcome back guests each year as well as welcome new folks.
Dude ranching became a tradition for the Van Berkum family in the late eighties when David went to wrangle on a ranch in Montana and sister Rachel took a job helping in cabins on a Colorado ranch. Jane was a wrangler at that same Montana ranch as David, and once they became a team, they agreed that they wanted to be dude ranchers themselves. Doug and Linda visited them all and pretty soon, guest ranching was in their blood.
A few years of searching for just the right place led them to the Rainbow Trout Lodge in southern Colorado, long famous for the amazing lodge, superb fishing and spectacular scenery. They changed the name to the Rainbow Trout Ranch, bringing the focus onto both the exceptional fishing and the fabulous riding, and the rest is a wonderful, rich history of western vacations and experiences. Come share this magic part of Colorado with us. It is spectacular and we look forward to welcoming you.
