Lenox Baker speaks at a celebration of black-footed ferrets being reintroduced on the Pitchfork Ranch near Meeteetse.

The historic Pitchfork Ranch is up for sale and its 96,000 acres of deeded and state and federally leased lands can all be yours for only $67 million.

The cattle ranch sits in the Greybull River valley, 11 miles west of Meeteetse and has intimate views of the Absaroka Mountain Range and is populated by many species of charismatic wildlife; most notably the highly endangered black-footed ferret, wolves and grizzly bears. Hunters are lucky to draw tags for big game in the Shoshone National Forest, just beyond the property boundaries.

Hunting access to the national forest will remain open despite the sale, according to the listing agency.

Properties West, a small real estate firm in Thermopolis, is representing the owners in the sale; their largest listing ever as they typically handle single-family home sales, according to co-owner Steth Daniels.

“It’s a hard place not to daydream about,” he said. “I feel lucky that I got to spend a little bit of time up there.”

The sale could end quickly if he wins the lottery, he said. “Don’t quit playing the Powerball now,” he advised.

All cattle, feed and equipment are included in the sale. Abundant springs on the ranch remain open year-round, making it ideal for raising livestock.

Properties West Farm and Ranch Specialist Ben Anson is the listing agent. He works part-time for the agency. If successful, the sale could mean the end of his and his wife, Lindsey’s full-time jobs. Anson has been the ranch manager of the Pitchfork since 2019, and has lived and worked on the property since 2016.

“I love my job,” he said in a Tuesday interview. “It would be hard to leave. But we won’t move unless we have to.”

He loves the majestic landscape, both for its natural beauty and the history surrounding the property, which is one of the largest tracts of contiguous land in Wyoming. The Pitchfork’s deeded land is about 14,000 acres. The rest of the property is leased from the state and federal government.

“[The property] is unparalleled to anything else on the market, having that many contiguous acres with that much history attached to it. I mean, being able to run right up into the Absarokas right there, never having to cross neighbors [land] for anything. I think it’s a pretty unique situation,” Anson said.

He realizes the new owner(s) could easily choose to hire a new team, leaving him unemployed after closing the multi-million dollar deal.

Rumors have been swirling about celebrities making inquiries about the property since the listing was first publicized. But both Daniels and Anson deny there is any truth to the rumors; one suggests Taylor Sheridan, the producer of Yellowstone, is interested in the property.

“I can tell you, we don’t have any celebrity buyers interested, or anything like that, that we’ve been in contact with,” Daniels said. “We have had, I would say, a decent amount of interest in it. But definitely nobody like that.”

Anson laughed at the suggestion that Sheridan had called him looking for information.

“I have heard the rumor, but I don’t know where people got that,” he said. “I guess it gives people something to talk about.”

Extensive work has been done to maintain facilities on the ranch. Eight houses are located on the property, along with several shops and barns. The Pitchfork is one of the only properties on the upper Greybull River using natural gas, allowing it to keep utility bills at a manageable cost, the sale bill advertises.

As the 96,000-acre Pitchfork Ranch near Meeteetse went up for sale late last year, some descriptions of the property for sale incorrectly suggested that one of the two partners in the purchase of the Pitchfork Ranch in 1999 was also selling his part of the ranch.

After purchasing the property together in 1999, the Lenox Baker family and  Greg Luce divided their interests in 2016.  Instead  of selling his interest to the Baker family (as previously reported incorrectly in some publications) they divided the property according to their ownership interests.

Luce retains and continues to reside with his wife, Stephanie, on his portion of land on the ranch, including the original Otto Franc homestead property highlighted by the Adobe House, the long barn and the bunkhouse, all of which he and his wife have restored.

There is no controversy here, Luce said in a Tuesday interview. He simply wants folks to know he’s not leaving despite contrary press reports about the sale.

There has been a handful of owners since being founded in 1878. Baker carried on the conservation ethos others owners prioritized. Through The Nature Conservancy, the property was placed in a conservation easement in perpetuity, saving the deeded land from large housing or industrial developments and assisting in conservation efforts for wildlife species including grizzly bears, wolves, big game species and the critically endangered black-footed ferrets.

In 2017 Baker announced the habitat will “remain intact long after he is gone” during a translocation of black-footed ferrets to the property.

“We need to keep these places just the way they are, because they are disappearing fast,” he said at the event.

History of the ranch

Founded in 1878 by Count Otto Franc von Liechtenstein (a member of German nobility), the cattle operation was the first on the upper reaches of the Greybull River.

Franc began his career in America as a banana importer, according to the Wyoming Historical Society. Franc was a shrewd businessman, as well as a sheriff and justice of the peace in the Big Horn Basin. He is cited for sentencing George “Butch” Cassidy to the Wyoming state prison for two years for horse theft.

Cassidy had purchased three horses, though he didn’t know they were stolen. The sheriff and a deputy caught up with Cassidy in June of 1894 as he stepped outside the Cowboy Bar in Meeteetse. Cassidy was found guilty and sent to jail, later blaming Franc’s unfair treatment for turning him into an outlaw, as reported by Ruffin Prevost in the Yellowstone Gate.

Franc died of a gunshot wound in 1903, which local papers reported as under mysterious circumstances. Yet, it is also widely reported that he shot himself accidentally while crossing a fence with a loaded shotgun in his hands.

Hunter safety courses were first taught in New York in 1949 before being expanded to the rest of the country.

Louis G. (LG) Phelps purchased the Pitchfork from Otto Franc’s estate and it was in the Phelps/Belden family for six generations; 95 years. In the Pitchfork’s heyday it encompassed seven ranches and 250,000 acres, running 10,000 cattle and 20,000 sheep. Then in 1914 the Pitchfork was introduced to the world stage by photographer Charles Belden, an avid conservationist. He lived alongside his subjects and he was able to capture the true life and times of the ranch until his departure from the ranch in 1940.

During Jack Turnell’s roughly 30 years of running and owning the ranch up to 1999, he is credited with having brought the pieces of the property back together after it was split in the 1940s.

Brand challenges

The ranch has also been involved in recent lawsuits. In 2013, Principle Petroleum Partners, a Texas-based oil and gas company, sued to build a road and infrastructure for a pipeline across the picturesque ranch.

The suit claimed the Pitchfork and The Nature Conservancy rejected the oil and gas developer’s offers and alternatives. According to the complaint, Baker told Principle Petroleum after an initial meeting in March that “this ain’t gonna happen.”

“I just wanted to let you know ahead of time so that you don’t waste a lot of time and any more money on it,” Baker said, according to a transcript of a voicemail submitted with the company’s suit. “But we don’t want this to happen and we’ll go to every length we can to not let it happen.”

The lawsuit was later settled or dismissed without the new infrastructure being built.

Last September another Texas company sued the Wyoming Pitchfork Ranch for using a name similar to their Texas-based Pitchfork Land and Cattle Co. The Texas ranch was founded about five years after the Wyoming Ranch and has been aware of its existence for decades, according to court documents.

The two companies “have peacefully coexisted for approximately 140 years, despite knowing of Defendant’s Pitchfork Ranch for at least several decades, including personally visiting [the] Ranch in Wyoming in 1986,” the documents say.

The Bakers are countersuing the Texas ranch and the parties have exchanged settlement terms but it is too early to say whether a prompt resolution is likely.

Anson said the lawsuit has nothing to do with the sale. The family has retired from ranching and has relocated to Park City, Utah to be close to family, particularly grandchildren, and health care, Anson said.

(Edited on Jan. 4)