South Dakota Cowboy Who Won $232.1 Million Powerball Lists $41.15 Million Ranch

In 2009, Neal Wanless was a young cowboy living on a ranch in Mission, S.D., in a county where around 48% of the population lives below the poverty line. When his family’s home was repossessed by the bank, he and his parents and brother moved to a camper; his father sold scrap metal to make ends meet. “We were struggling,” Mr. Wanless said. Mr. Wanless, then 23, bought a lottery ticket at a local convenience store while getting gas. He won a $232.1 million Powerball prize, making him the winner of the largest lottery jackpot ever won in the state. With his winnings, he decided to buy his own ranch. Now Mr. Wanless is putting the ranch—nearly 50,000 acres spanning rolling hills, grazing pastures and a river—on the market for $41.15 million. If it sold for anywhere close to that asking price, the property would be among the most expensive single ranches ever sold in South Dakota, said his listing agent, Robb Nelson of Hall and Hall. Mr. Wanless, 34, said he is selling because he and his new wife Jody Gilson Wanless are spending more time at her family’s cattle ranch in Canada’s British Columbia. They also recently purchased a house in Arizona, where they plan to spend the winters. “I like the South Dakota winters, but I don’t like the wind,” he said. The property, known as Bismarck Ranch, is named for the trail that brought people from Bismarck, North Dakota to Deadwood during the days of the Black Hills gold rush. It includes about 42,000 deeded acres, about 4,000 acres of land leased for grazing from the Bureau of Land Management and about 1,600 acres leased from the state, Mr. Nelson said. It is home to 3,000 yearlings, 1,600 cow-calf pairs and about 1,000 wild horses...WSJ