http://news.yahoo.com/waggoner-ranch-among-us-largest-223003722.html
Let me know if any of you Texas surveyors get this one. If its anything like Florida, they will probably call you 3 days before closing to do it.
"Local residents have been worried that oil wildcatters or foreign investors will divide up the land and fire ranch employees, more motivated by making a profit than preserving history."
It may be too late in this case, and the property is probably too large and diverse, but a lot of ranches are going into grassland preservation or conservation easements.
How about Waggoner National Park.
Or maybe just don't worry (care) about it. Whatever happens, happens.
Don
"But the realtor told me the survey would only be 2 or 3 hundred dollars"
They say it is for sale and it has been listed for some time but they are not serious about it. My friend sells ranches for a living and he has brought them very reasonable offers from household name type clients and has not even got a response.
> "... more motivated by making a profit than preserving history."
>
Kind of like ol' W.T. Waggoner himself... and every other sane rancher I've ever met.
With all the hunting and fishing in that part of Texas, this guy might be interested:
He could then cede from Texas and establish his own country of Nugentland...:pinch:
With him as King Ted the First, of course...
All the big ranches in these parts are owned by absentee millionaire landowners. We know the foreman of the Izee ranch and his boss, the owner, is a genitic engineer in Seattle who made his millions engineering a more productive strain of strawberries. The ranch is either a hobby and playground for him and his Seattle buddies or a tax write off.
Most of the larger land holdings around here are an investment to spend those megabucks made from their real job.
The largest property to sale in the area was a few months ago on a multi thousand acre property an investor had been putting together from smaller tree farms and ranches for the last 20yrs from funds his family had to spend after turning stocks into cash. Now they are turning property into other investments.
The newest final surveys of these local large tracts hardly resemble the original surveys as they ignore any monuments along long boundaries and put straight some actual very crooked lines that should remain crooked to avoid overlapping boundaries.
0.02
Might be worth something if mineral and oil and gas rights attach.
Much of it hasn't been drilled for oil? Somebody's gonna get filthy rich on all the oil and natural gas underneath a piece of land that big.
> Much of it hasn't been drilled for oil? Somebody's gonna get filthy rich on all the oil and natural gas underneath a piece of land that big.
The Waggoner ranch has their own oil division that drills and produces on the ranch. While I doubt they have covered every inch of the ranch they have been drilling out there since around 1910 if I recall correctly. I have personally done some exploration work for them out there and I know a bunch of it has been studied and they have a good estimate of what is the there.
