T. Boone Pickens’ panhandle ranch has sold for $170M

The 64,000-acre Mesa Vista Ranch, owned by the late oil tycoon and billionaire T. Boone Pickens, sold in two pieces this year for an estimated total of $170 million.

A group led by Bill Kent, an oil investor who owns Kent Companies, recently purchased 36,000 acres on the western side of the property that include “the Lodge,” a 25,000-square-foot mansion where Pickens once lived and hosted politicians and CEOs. The eastern side of the property was purchased by cattle rancher Travis Chester earlier this year.

The recent sale was brokered by Sam Middleton of Chas. S. Middleton and Son, and Monte Lyons of Hall and Hall, according to a Dec. 1 announcement. Exact financial figures were not disclosed, but the combined proceeds of the two transactions were near the $170 million price tag, according to Jay Rosser of BP Capital, who is a former associate of Pickens.

The ranch at 2050 Reynolds Ranch Road in Pampa is 78 miles northeast of Amarillo. Pickens was 91 when he died in 2019. The billionaire purchased the property in 1971 and spent millions of dollars and multiple decades turning it into a paradise that is one of the premiere ranch properties in Texas. Pickens referred to the ranch as “the world’s best quail hunting.”

The mansion is on the ranch’s western side and features a tennis court, a skeet shooting range and a small golf course, according to the property listing. The home has 10,000 square feet of porches and patio areas.

Pickens told Architectural Digest in 2016 that he knew his kids wouldn’t want the ranch after he died, and he’d offered it to media mogul Ted Turner.

“In fact, the last time I visited Ted on his Montana ranch — he owns 27 — I asked him, ‘Do you want to be put on the list of potential buyers to contact when I’m gone?’” Pickens told the magazine. “And Ted asked, ‘Is there a charge for that?’ I told him, ‘No. The only requirement is, you have to attend my funeral, because that’s where the bid packets will be handed out.’”

The luxury ranch market has been booming across Texas and other rural markets as the country’s wealthiest sought wide-open spaces during the pandemic. Earlier this year, Taylor Sheridan, co-creator the hit show Yellowstone, purchased the historic Four Sixes Ranch, a 266,000-acre historic property owned by the heirs of Samuel Burnett that was listed for $341 million. The Texas portion of the historic Matador Ranch, listed at $124 million, sold to multiple buyers in 2020.

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