Storied Waggoner Ranch is for sale for $725 million

One of the largest ranches in the United States and an icon of the Texas horse and cattle culture has been listed for sale for $725 million, marking the end of a decades-long courtroom dispute among the heirs of cattle baron W.T. Waggoner. The estate includes a 510,000-acre ranch spread over six North Texas counties, with two main compounds, hundreds of homes, about 20 cowboy camps, hundreds of quarter-horses, thousands of heads of cattle, 1,200 oil wells and 30,000 acres of cultivated land, according to Dallas-based broker Bernie Uechtritz, who is handling the sale along with broker Sam Middleton of Lubbock. Heirs and stakeholders occupy two of the three principal houses and much of the estate has not yet been explored for oil and other mineral reserves. Uechtritz says the estate falls within a “super asset class,” akin to selling the “Statue of Liberty” of cowboy culture. The Waggoner ranch is the largest contiguous ranch in the United States. It covers the southern half of Wilbarger County, the northern third of Baylor County and portions of Wichita, Archer, Knox and Foard counties just before the Panhandle juts north from the Red River. W.T. Waggoner’s father, Dan Waggoner, started ranching in 1849, and the Waggoner name was prominent in the development of Hereford cattle and pedigreed American quarter horses. After his father died, W.T. “Tom” Waggoner assumed control of the ranch and established lease agreements with Texaco. He moved the ranch headquarters to Vernon but remained a fixture in Decatur and Fort Worth. In 1903, fearing that his daughter, Electra, might move east with her new husband, Waggoner commissioned a three-story Georgian revival home for the newlyweds. The home was later named Thistle Hill and still stands on Fort Worth’s Pennsylvania Avenue. Waggoner built Arlington Downs Racetrack in Arlington and a 20-story office building that still stands in downtown Fort Worth. He died in 1934...more