Welcome to Wyoming’s most expensive old house listing! Grand View River Ranch was actually won in a card game back in the day. Grand View River Ranch was built in 1920. It is located on 118.86 acres in Jackson, Wyoming. The property has historic barns, cabins, Bar B C Ranch, lodge and a guest house. The Gros Ventre River runs through the property and there are views of the Grand Tetons. $58,000,000
From the Zillow listing:
Grand View River Ranch is not only a veritable guest-ready paradise as it stands, it represents boundless potential for an intrepid new owner to re-envision its purpose and potential. Whether you aim to create a stunning private compound for your family, continue the growth of a wildly successful dude ranch, or simply contribute to a noble conservation effort, GVRR represents a chance to own a storied piece of Jackson’s history and truly make your mark on its future. Replete with historic barns, storied cabins from Bar B C Ranch, lodge, and guest house, the property has all the infrastructure to continue as a ranch or welcome a family to the doorstep of adventure. Own your own private section of the Gros Ventre River. Abundant Grand Teton Views and more. Won in a poker game in 1944. With the increase in tourism came the requisite surge of development. Lodging cabins, gas stations, taverns and saloons all began to crop up beneath the stunning silhouette of the Tetons. In 1927, John D. Rockefeller Jr. visited the valley and fell in love with it. Over the next two decades, he quietly purchased land in the area, through a local banker named Robert Miller, eventually amassing 35,000 acres. The purpose of the purchase and the identity of the buyer were kept secret. In 1942, Rockefeller informed Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes that he was no longer willing to hold on to the land. A year later, in 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order that created the Jackson Hole Monument, which included the Rockefeller lands. This action remains one of the most controversial in the history of the national parks. In protest, armed ranchers, including Teton County Commissioner Cliff Hansen and actor Wallace Beery, trailed cattle across the Monument. (A photograph of this event was taken by the Associated Press in 1943.) The controversy over attempts to extend federal government control in northwestern Wyoming had been ongoing for 30 years. It was finally resolved when Grand Teton National Park was established in its current form in 1950. Despite the welcome uptick in local revenue, ranchers were keen to preserve the valley and control the unnecessary development of wild spaces. Due to private ownership holdouts, Grand View River Ranch was one of the properties that Rockefeller did not acquire and thus became a rare federal in-held private parcel within the wilds of the iconic national park. The property was originally homesteaded by William Smith in 1910, and he was granted water rights the following year. In 1915, Mr. Smith received the deed to the property. The property was later sold to William Woodward in 1920, and then to John Barnes of Washington DC in 1932. Barnes used the property as a hunting camp. In 1944, Claude Wham, a cowboy working for the Chambers family on their ranch on Mormon Row, won the property from Barnes in a card game. In 1925 a massive landslide dammed the Gros Ventre River and created Slide Lake. The landslide, which was triggered by heavy rainfall and unstable geological conditions, killed six people and destroyed several buildings in the nearby town of Kelly. This historic geologic event pushed the mighty Gros Ventre River into the property boundary. This bestowed ownership rights on both banks of this Nationally recognized Wild & Scenic River to Grand View River Ranch for nearly a half mile of its flow.
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