In July, legendary oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens was briefly hospitalized after suffering a “Texas-sized fall,” which prompted him to write an emotional LinkedIn post that grappled with his mortality. Four months later, Pickens put Mesa Vista, his nearly 65,000-acre ranch in the Texas Panhandle, on the market for $250 million.
“Selling the ranch is the prudent thing for an 89-year-old man to do,” Pickens explained in a statement included in the property’s listing, which is being jointly handled by real estate brokers Hall and Hall and Chas S. Middleton and Sons. “It’s time to get my life and my affairs in order.”
In his case, those “affairs” include a ranch boasting its own airport, beer pub, fifty-dog kennel, and twelve miles of artificial water features. Pickens purchased the first piece of the ranch—2,900 acres along the south side of the Canadian River in Roberts County—in 1971. Back then the only structure on the property was a livestock feed house that Pickens used to keep warm while quail hunting.
Pickens has made a few improvements over the years. In 1988 he began constructing the Lodge, now a 25,000-square-foot compound with sleeping quarters and meeting spaces. Near the compound are two guest houses, the pub, the chapel, the gun room, the kennel, a tennis court, a skeet/trap range, and a golf course with two fairways and greens. In 2000, Boone began building a San Simeon-esque castle that now stands atop an artificial hill overlooking an artificial lake.
Mesa Vista is being offered to buyers as a “turn-key” purchase, meaning that they’ll get everything on the property minus Pickens’s art collection and his herd of 400 cattle, which are available to be purchased separately. Even the ranch hands are up for grabs: the property’s prospectus informs buyers that “very devoted, generally long-term employees are in place on the ranch, and these employees are interested in staying and continuing on with new ownership.”
Count us as interested—just as soon as we can rustle up a quarter-billion dollars.
