T. Boone Pickens’s Panhandle ranch sells for about $170 million

AMARILLO — One of the most extravagant ranches in the Texas Panhandle, previously owned by the late oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens, recently sold for about $170 million.

Mesa Vista covers almost 37,000 acres along 25 miles of the Canadian River. The sale, announced Tuesday, was to fellow rancher Travis Chester, who had purchased more than 27,000 acres of the property in December.

"The sale of the Mesa Vista Ranch is basically 'turnkey,' including all rolling stock, equipment, pickup trucks, hunting vehicles, farming equipment, furnishings, bird dogs, etc.," according to the Hall & Hall listing. "The only exclusions are Boone's personal effects, livestock, and remaining art collection. The art is available to be purchased separately."

Pickens became a billionaire through the oil and natural gas industry, and he had a net worth of $1 billion at the time of his death in 2019 at the age of 91. He was a former Amarillo resident and a graduate of Oklahoma State University, and he had decked out Mesa Vista in various shades of orange in honor of the university. In the early 2000s, he donated more than $200 million to the Oklahoma State athletic department, and the university renamed its football stadium after him.

Pickens purchased the first 2,900 acres of Mesa Vista in 1971 and built a small corrugated metal livestock feed house. He sheltered in the feed house while quail hunting, according to mesavistaranch.com.

Mesa Vista ranch has an airport, multiple homes and varied landscape

Mesa Vista, 85 miles northeast of Amarillo, extends about 100 square miles and hosts a variety of landscapes and luxury.

The Mesa Vista compound includes:

A five-bedroom family house.

An 11,500-square-foot lake house with three bedrooms.

A 2,300-square-foot gate house with three bedrooms.

A private airport with a two-bedroom apartment for pilots.

A chapel.

A 2,250-square-foot pub.

A golf course.

A tennis court.

A 400-square-foot gun room.

A 25,000-square-foot lodge and conference center with a commercial kitchen, bedrooms, a library, a 30-seat theater and a wine cellar.

An 11,000-square-foot dog kennel, which includes a veterinary lab and 3,600 square feet of enclosed, air-conditioned space.

The white-frame home in which Pickens grew up; he moved the house from Oklahoma.

The land offers just as much variety, with rolling sand hills, prairies, mesas and elevated ridges. The elevation changes from 2,400 feet in the river bottom country to about 2,900 feet at the mesa tops.

"One of Boone's major goals for the ranch was to enrich the land, returning it to an oasis for wildlife, much of which is back to its natural state of lush natural grasses, which have never been grazed," according to a news release. "He was a leader in land conservation practices, which are now followed by many other ranchers in the United States."

There are also about 12 miles of human-made and recirculating creeks, lakes, waterfalls and ponds. Some of that water goes to Amarillo, due to the City Council's vote last July to purchase 15,768 acres of water rights in Roberts County.