Recreation, Fishing, & Hunting
The location of the ranch just outside of Fairplay in the South Park region is close to all kinds of recreational pursuits in all seasons. The region is surrounded by hiking, mountain biking, off-road and equestrian trails and also hosts many of the state’s popular 14’ers; Peaks Exceeding 14,000 feet. The rich mining history provides interesting museums and historic sites. The town of Breckenridge and the Summit County ski resorts are a quick 1/2 hour to the north over Hoosier Pass with all the amenities one would expect from a resort. A half hour to the south is the mountain community of Buena Vista and the Arkansas River with more gold medal fishing stream sections and whitewater rafting of all difficulty levels.
Fourmile Creek traverses the ranch with roughly a mile and a half of stream offering excellent habitat and fishing opportunities for mostly rainbow and brown trout. The section of stream has been periodically stocked through the tenure of the sellers ownership, but rarely fished and some of the rainbows have achieved good size for a smaller creek. The current owners share in the recreational lease for fishing upon the adjacent Colorado State land containing an additional 2 miles of the creek. This lease will expire 12/19/25 and the State will accept competing bids up to 6 months prior to expiration.
South Park is also home to several excellent reservoirs and streams offering world class Gold Medal trout fishing opportunities including Antero , Spinney Mountain and Eleven Mile reservoirs. Between Spinney and Eleven Mile there is the famous Dream Stream of the South Platte River.
One of the tremendous benefits of the sizable deeded acreage of the ranch is the inclusion within the landowner preference program to qualify for big game hunting tags within GMU 49; a very desirable unit which can otherwise take as many as 7 or more preference points to hunt during the archery and early seasons. The 2023 season resulted in 12 elk tags being drawn for a mixture of public and private land tags.
Elk frequent the ranch at all times of the year with bulls and cows being harvested on the deeded parcels. It is not uncommon to look out the expansive windows of the home and see large herds gathered.
GMU 49 also has extensive public lands closely accessed from the ranch with excellent hunting for Elk, Deer, and Pronghorn.
