Recently, it was determined as many as 80 percent of buyers who purchased land in Texas did so for nonagricultural purposes. Researchers found that up to 60 percent of land sold in Montana and Wyoming is going to folks who are buying a lifestyle, not a cow ranch.

In a 10-year study of ranch ownership around Yellowstone Park, researchers found that 39 percent of the buyers were “amenity ranchers,” or those who would just as soon look out their picture window and see a herd of elk instead of a herd of cows. Another 26 percent were investors or developers.

In thumbing through an issue of Cowboys and Indians, I counted 17 full-page ads for ranches which are being subdivided and sold off as exclusive home sites. For $850,000, you could buy your own 100-acre homestead within what used to be the Maytag Mountain Ranch of Colorado, and for close to $1 million, you could buy a lot and build your own million-dollar log home in the Deschutes River Ranch of Oregon.

If your pockets aren’t deep, you could always buy a site on the Hidden Canyon Ranch in Custer, S.D., for only $125,000 – which is about what you’d spend keeping yourself warm during the winter.

In 35 years of traveling all over the West, I’ve stumbled across places I thought would be working cow ranches forever. Now it seems the country-club set, in a hurry to get a piece of paradise before it’s all locked up, has found these places too.
So now, the old home place is behind guarded gates with “No Trespassing” signs, white plastic fences and paved ranch roads: A castle on every creek and a mansion on every mountain.
Wall Street CEOs and high-tech millionaires fly in for the weekend to enjoy the scenery, and don’t care if their “ranch” turns a profit. These are people with two or three homes and enough money to make winter optional. They build monuments in stone and log, use water for private ponds, fragment the habitat and then get eco-gratification by selling a conservation easement to the Nature Conservancy.
They see themselves as conservationists, saving ranchland from ranchers. They think wolves are neat until they devour a pet dog, and they have no idea rattlesnakes come with the deed. The newcomers want watchable wildlife or something to shoot at. Mostly, though, what they want is to be left alone in their gated “communities” of strangers.

The homes of the new owners all look like they were done by the same Hollywood interior decorator: Navajo blankets thrown over leather couches, old saddles, antler chandeliers and expensive pictures of cowboys and Indians on the walls. (Although, the only Indians they know work at a casino and the only cowboys they admire are poets.)

In the New West, cows and real cowboys are being displaced by gardeners, polo ponies, Sierra Clubbers and endangered species. Really, the only things endangered are the colorful characters who made the landscape so darn enjoyable to begin with.

Instead of cowboys, the new owners want caretakers, chore boys and ranch maids whose job it is to keep the place looking good.
This new “cowboy” rides a lawnmower more than a horse and ties more flies than he does calves. 

These new “ranchers” are looking for a different kind of ranch hand, who knows how to polish silver, run a shuttle service to the airport and babysit spoiled kids in two-toned cowboy boots and designer jeans that cost more than it would take to feed a cow through winter.
If the “ranch” has a brand at all, it’s for branding the end of wine barrels, and the tack room is full of English saddles.

This new breed of businessmen ranchers don’t want cowboys or cows cluttering up their landscape. Oh sure, they want cowhides and cow skulls hanging on their walls, but not on their range. They love the image – just not the real thing. 

Readers with questions or comments for Lee Pitts may write to him in care of this publication.