The Wyoming ranch bigger than NYC that's up for sale for $22 million
A stunning Wyoming ranch larger than all of New York City and the state of Delaware can be yours for $22 million. The Midland Ranch, which has remained in the same family since 1909, spans 1.15 million acres - making it more than five times larger than all five boroughs of the Big Apple.
But that figure includes a lot of land leased by the Bureau of Land Management and the state of Wyoming, with LandVest Christie's International Real Estate only offering a deed for 5,880 acres, Cowboy State Daily reports. Leases for the other land may also be conveyed with the property, which is listed for $22 million if bought whole. Prospective buyers, though, could also consider purchasing one of five units, which range in price from $1 million to $9.9 million.
The first three units are located near the Boulder area of southwest Wyoming and include the main summer pastures, as well as fisheries, expansive water rights, a rock-climbing mecca on Prospect Mountain and a potential home site along the Little Sandy River, according to Mansion Global. The fourth unit is further to the east, between Pinedale and Rock Spring. It comprises the largest portion of the ranch, including the land leased from the Bureau of Land Management for grazing and trailing.
The final section includes the winter pastures and is located south of Rock Spring, just north of the border of Colorado and Utah. 'There are about a million places for a homesite on a property of this scale,' Court Merrigan, the broker for the property, told Mansion Global. 'The only question is what you want. Do you want a view of the Wind River Mountains? Do you want a house near the Big Sandy River? Do you want it near the reservoir?'
As it stands currently, the ranch offers two seasonal residences in the Prospect Mountains for the summers. There are also functional buildings that serve as bunkhouses for ranch hands, as well as barns, shops and corrals made of weathered wood. A historic sheep-shearing shed also sits on the expansive property, which is currently owned by Pete and Sue Aramel, third-generation sheep and cattle ranchers whose ancestors came from the Basque region of France. 'They brought sheep-raising with them from the old country and they have kept up with it,' Merrigan said of their transhumance method of herding - which involves moving livestock more than 100 miles between summer and winter pasteures. 'Taken as a whole, that makes this a very unique operation,' he noted. 'There's few places left in the West that truly practice it.'
In addition to the unique ranching opportunities the land provides, its miles of private river frontage along the Big Sandy River and Little Sandy Creek offers 'world-class' fishing, while the vast land offers plenty of hunting opportunities with herds of more than 15,000 antelope as well as herds of elk and deer. 'Trophy game is out there, just because of the scale this property has,' Merrigan said. 'And because of the way they have managed things with that transhumance, which flows in tandem with the natural ecosystem and the natural migration patterns of the animals that are out there.'
Much of the land also serves as a remnant from the Wild West, with water rights for the property dating back to when Wyoming was still considered an American territory - though Merrigan noted that it has improved since then. 'Over generations, [the] family has augmented its water supply, creating an entirely self-sufficient ranch,' which is important as the southern portion gets 'much more arid,' he said. 'They have managed and handled that and engineered it - over the past, more than a century, so that it is just a beautiful system of wells that are easily within reach of all the livestock,' the broker said. 'It's an amazing oasis down along the river.'
Large portions of both the Oregon and Mormon trails ran through the property, with Merrigan explaining that the land served an important role in the Oregon trail. 'This was kind of the parting of the ways,' he said. 'This was where you had to decide if you were going to Oregon, to Utah or to California.' It was also once part of the Outlaw Trail that was traversed by bandits like Butch Cassidy in the late 1800s.
'They chose that spot because it was pretty remote for one, and two, there's a live stream there with potable water,' Merrigan said. 'You can just drink straight from it. So it was a good place for them after whatever they were doin, running down a stagecoach or whatever it may have been back then,' he said of the outlaws that once roamed the land.
The ranch, itself, first got its start around 1860, when several cabins served as a remount station for the Pony Express, America's early mail system. It was then homesteaded in the 1890s and settled by French Basque immigrant John Aramel in 1909. 'It's uniqueness in the landscape of the West, based on its scale and what the animals have done over the last generation, this is just a property that is truly unique,' Merrigan told Cowboy State. 'I know everyone always says that, but this is truly one-of-a-kind.'
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