Land for sale including farms, ranches, timberland, mountain, lake & country homes.
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Land Resources / News / Wyoming
Land ho! online
Source: Casper Star Tribune, by Tom Morton
The Internet has launched the next phase of Manifest Destiny.
April 15, 2007 Modern pioneers clicking faster than a six-shooter at high noon can behold the Western dream of "country style living with big city conveniences," "more antelope than people," "majestic," "rugged," "beautiful with enchanting views," "river frontage to prairie grassland to the rising terrain," and other descriptions that would have awed Louis L'Amour or Zane Grey. In central and southeastern Wyoming, the Brooks Realty & Advisory Group (yes, the acronym is BRAG) is selling hundreds of 35-plus-acre lots on four ranches portrayed as "homestead(s) with history" and "capturing the true Western spirit" on stunning multimedia Web sites including wyominglandrush.com, cheyennewyomingland.com and casperwyomingland.com. Those Web sites caught the attention of Rick and Lisa Minyard, who have had their fill of Southern California where they live now. "What the Internet did was put Casper on the map for us," Lisa said. She had never been to Wyoming. Rick visited Yellowstone, the Tetons and Casper when he was a kid traveling with his family in the 1960s. They're still in their 40s and eyeing retirement in a decade. But not in California, where their 2,000-square-foot house north of Los Angeles was worth nearly $280,000 in late 1999 and now would sell for over $750,000, he said. That's great equity for anywhere else but there. "Full-blown retirement in LA is a tough haul," he said. So telecommunications executive Rick scouted Western vistas online and kept returning to the hundreds of parcels available at the former B.B. Brooks Ranch north of Casper. Wyominglandrush.com doesn't promise wells or power lines, but it portrays a romance of the West nurtured for more than a century by music, literature and film. "I think there are people who are buying a dream," Rick said. Brooks Ranch and BRAG Bryant B. Brooks founded the ranch in 1882 and later became governor and first president of the Wyoming National Bank, according to casperwyomingland.com. Brooks sold the ranch -- known as the "V-bar-V" -- to H.E. "Doc" Stuckenhoff in the 1940s. His son Ed operated the ranch until 1999, and he died in 2001. Ed Stuckenhoff's widow Bobbi sold 41,000 acres of the ranch -- interspersed with some federal, state and private lands -- to the Brooks Realty & Advisory Group several yeas ago, said Steve Amick, who runs the B.B. Brooks office on Ormsby Road two miles east of Interstate 25. The Brooks in BRAG is Benjamin F. Brooks III, nicknamed Tres Brooks. He appears on horseback in many of the promotional brochures, photos and videos and has no relationship to the Brooks family that founded the ranch, Amick added. In 2005, BRAG took advantage of a loophole in zoning laws -- counties cannot regulate parcels subdivided over 35 acres -- and subdivided the north end of the former ranch into 197 parcels, Amick said. The company thought it would take more than a year to sell these parcels north of Ormsby Road known as Phase I, he said. They were gone in eight weeks, Amick said. "It seems to be filling a need for people to buy land out of town," he said. "Wyoming is one of the last areas that hasn't been ruined." The initial success prompted BRAG to subdivide 267 parcels north of Ormsby Road for a Phase II. Almost all of them are sold. Most of the parcels are about 40 acres, with some 50 acres to 60 acres, and one at 154 acres. Phase II prices range from $995 to $1,595 an acre. Phase III, located south of Ormsby Road and east and north of Cole Creek Road, has sold about a third of its 165 parcels. Most of these parcels are between 35 acres and 40 acres; none are over 60 acres. Phase III prices range from $1,195 an acre to $1,995 an acre. Further south, BRAG is planning Phase IV, Amick said. Most prospective buyers don't learn of B.B. Brooks Ranch or BRAG's other Wyoming ranches -- Diamond B and Remington ranches near Cheyenne, and Wild Horse Ranch near Laramie -- through the Internet first, he said. They usually see them on ads on the Discovery Channel and the History Channel, or in magazines and newspapers, Amick said. The phones at the ranch office will light up for 15 minutes after one of those ads airs, he said. They then do more research on the Web sites, he said. The Scottsdale-based CyberMark.com helped BRAG develop its presence on the Internet, said the company's CEO Kemberly Judd-Pennie. CyberMark.com -- the Web site is cybermarkintl.com -- further helped BRAG achieve "search engine optimization" by clarifying its codes and language to appear close to the top of Google, Yahoo and other search engines, Judd-Pennie said. On Google alone, "Wyoming land for sale" generates nearly 3.3 million matches, and "Casper land for sale" generates 1.4 million matches. A lot of people have liked what they've seen, and they're seeing it nationwide. A cursory check of buyers at the Natrona County Clerk's office indicates many of the buyers hail from Florida, Arizona, California, Nevada, southeastern Atlantic seaboard states, some from Texas and Louisiana, a couple from Hawai'i and even Liberia. Even some locals are buying, Amick said. "It's taken a long time for people to get over the stigma (of buying at B.B. Brooks) when we first came to town. In other (BRAG) projects, local people wait 'til it's gone." After all, people in Wyoming are already here with their own land. More than infrastructure The Minyards learned a lot from the www.wyominglandrush.com Web site in their quest for Western land. To a point. "We had to be close enough to some population and culture," Lisa said. So they also checked out the Web sites of the city of Casper, the Chamber of Commerce, the Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Casper Star-Tribune, the arts, Casper College, geography such as proximity to Casper Mountain, stories about economic development, sports, health care, and outdoor activities especially to satisfy Lisa's fly fishing fanaticism. They also checked out forums on www.city-data.com to hear from the people who aren't paid to puff central Wyoming, they said. "People said what a great place it is if you want to be left alone," said Rick, a self-described libertarian. But the Minyards had to see it for themselves. So they flew to Denver on April 6, rented a car, drove to Casper, drove up the mountain, hung out at the Wonder Bar, and talked to the locals, Lisa said. "We're not used to people being so nice." They also went on a three-hour tour of the ranch, they said. Amick estimates between 75 percent and 80 percent of prospective buyers who research the ranch online travel to Wyoming. About 80 percent of those buy, he said. Buyers see for themselves that B.B. Brooks isn't green year-round, it doesn't have streams, or sewer lines, not all parcels have mountain views, and the lots don't have electricity unless owners are willing to have a transmission line extended at $7 per foot or try solar or wind power. Water, the Minyards added, can be had by drilling for it at about $22 a foot. People find water anywhere from 240 feet to 500 feet, ranging from a few gallons to 60 gallons a minute, they and Amick said. Water, power, sewer and other infrastructure are basic, so the Minyards were floored to hear that upward of one fourth of buyers didn't bother to kick the dirt for themselves, Rick said. "When we heard people were buying sight unseen -- we can't even fathom that." He and Lisa loved what they saw, but they're not in a hurry as they continue their research, Rick said Friday. "We don't want to bite off more than we can chew," he said. Read the complete article from Casper Star Tribune » |
