Christine Dorgan has a box full of swag and gear she ordered with points from the back of her Marlboro cigarette packs: a watch, a dart board, a portable picnic table. And last year, just as the pandemic hit, she won her most coveted prize: a trip to the Marlboro Ranch.
The trip, like so many vacations, was canceled by Covid-19. And now she will never get the chance to go. In June, cigarette maker Philip Morris USA sold the 18,000-acre Montana property where the company for two decades had hosted loyal customers on all-expense-paid trips. As cigarette smoking declines, so does its trappings.
“I signed up for that thing I don’t know how many times,” said Ms. Dorgan, a 54-year-old diesel mechanic who lives in Windom, Minn. A smoker since the age of 12, she quit last year shortly before she won the Marlboro trip in a sweepstakes, but still wanted to go. “I wanted to see a real cowboy,” she said.
The getaway, formally known as Crazy Mountain Ranch, was a real-life incarnation of the cigarette maker’s Marlboro Man marketing campaigns, which featured gruff cowboys riding horses and snowy Western peaks.
It was Disneyland for smokers. Guests stayed in a faux ghost town, with a mining office, bank, sheriff’s office and saloon. When they arrived, their beds were piled with gifts: Stetson hats, cowboy boots, jackets, bandannas, digital cameras, sunglasses, ashtrays and, in earlier years, packs of cigarettes.