Years ago, at a high school commencement speech for my grandson, I offered to trade [Mesa Verde Ranch] (and my jet, and my then-billion dollar bank account) for their place as graduating seniors with a lifetime of dreams and accomplishments to come. Today, trading my ranch is off the table. Selling it is not. I’m officially putting it on the market. – T. Boone Pickens
Famed oil tycoon and businessman T. Boone Pickens has listed his longtime Texas Panhandle ranch for sale. Occupying a 100-square-mile swath in Roberts County that includes about 25 miles of Canadian River frontage, Pickens assembled Mesa Vista Ranch over the course of almost a half-century since his first acquisition of 2,900 acres along the south side of the river in 1971. Priced at $250 million, the ranch is among the most expensive and biggest properties on the market today.
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In a statement announcing the sale, 89-year-old Pickens noted, “There are many reasons why the time is right to sell the ranch now, not the least of them ensuring that what I truly believe is one of the most magnificent properties in the world winds up with an individual or entity that shares my conservation beliefs.”
He continues to reflect on how decades-long investments in habitat and wildlife management has returned the land here to “pristine prairie conditions,” and allowed the land to flourish with, among other things, some of “the best quail hunting in the world.”
Located among a landscape of lush river bottomlands to rolling hills and prairies, Pickens recounts the special place the Canadian River holds in his own childhood. Traversing Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and then Oklahoma on its way to join the Arkansas River in the eastern part of Oklahoma, Pickens earned a Boy Scout Merit Badge on a ten-mile round-trip to the river from his boyhood hometown of Holdenville, Oklahoma. It is this river that gives life to much of the property’s exceptional wildlife and habitat.
Along with the riverine habitat along the northern edge of the property, Pickens undertook a massive water enhancement project in the early 2000s to create a series of lakes, dams, creeks and other water features throughout the property that give Mesa Creek the feel of a Texas oasis. An 11,500-square-foot Lake House, completed in 2008 and the main residence of the owner, proudly caps the tranquil, water park-esque setting. (Read the Architectural Digest review of the home here.)
Among the many attractive and notable features of this Roberts County landmark, Mesa Verde boasts a 25,000-square-foot main compound, 6,000-square-foot guest annex and separate venue, called the “Pub,” for entertainment and recreation. As you’d expect from a place that’s hosted politicians, celebs and corporate titans, Mesa Verde has its own 6,000-foot runway and airport hangar for guests jetting in by private jet.
New to the market at the beginning of December 2017, the Mesa Verde listing is being jointly co-brokered by Chas S. Middleton and Son’s Sam Middleton and Hall & Hall’s Monte Lyons. The ranch is approximately 85 miles northeast of Amarillo.
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