An 80,000-acre ranch in the Texas Panhandle is hitting the market for the first time in 120 years with an asking price of $200 million.
Turkey Track Ranch is a working ranch with fertile grasslands and oil and gas wells, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The buyer would obtain a 40 percent stake in mineral rights and revenues from existing wells as well as any future wells. They would also receive wind and solar rights.
Bernard Uechtritz, founder of Icon Global Group, told the Dallas Business Journal he appraised the ranch by using an unconventional approach, instead of basing the price on a per acre basis of comparable value sale.
The ranch’s price is based on “its uniqueness and its scarcity and its one-of-a-kind values,” Uechtritz said, comparing the approach to his marketing of the 510,000-acre Waggoner Ranch, which listed for $725 million.
Turkey Track Ranch sits along 26 miles of the Canadian River near the town of Borger, north of Amarillo. It reportedly includes an unusually high amount of surface water for the region.
A marketing video from Dallas-based Icon Global Group, which is representing the families, calls the property “an oasis of the Texas Panhandle.”
A ranch of the same size in Montana listed earlier this year for around $136 million and a sale closed last month, although a price has yet to become public.
The ranch has been leased to Adobe Walls Cattle Company since 2009. The company is named after a former settlement on the property.
That was the site of the Battles of Adobe Walls in 1864 and 1874, both battles between local Native Americans and white settlers. A six-acre site was given to a local historical society in 1924.
The ranch was established later in the 1870s and has been owned by the Whittenburg and Coble families since the turn of the 20th century. They are descendants of past stewards Tom Coble and James A. Whittenburg III.
The property has been largely preserved under the families’ ownership and has received various environmental awards over the years, including the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Environmental Stewardship Award in 2017.
In a statement via Icon Global, the Coble and Whittenburg families cited the ”family’s increasing numbers and geographical distances” as reasons to sell the property.
[Fort Worth Star-Telegram] — Dennis Lynch