After more than 30 years of private stewardship, a ranch built in the Vail Valley by the founders of Architectural Digest and Bon Appetit magazines has been put on the market for $66.5 million.
The 287-acre Knapp Ranch started by Bud and Betsy Knapp is about 30 miles west of Vail and adjacent to the White River National Forest and the Holy Cross Wilderness.
Ken Mirr of the , which listed the property for sale, said in a statement that the ranch is regarded “as one of the Western Region’s most iconic mountain, fishing and conservation ranches.”
The Knapps expanded their vision beyond building an informal country retreat for family and friends to making it a working farm, using sustainable practices, according to the Mirr Ranch Group.
bought the property in 1993, their son, Aaron Knapp, said.
“The first two years were spent working with the (U.S.) Army Corps of Engineers rehabbing West Lake Creek, which runs right down the middle of the property,” Aaron said.
They reintroduced native plants, fish and insects and created pools for fish. The Knapps built cabins and then the main house on a hill.
The Knapps moved to the ranch full-time in 2006, Aaron said. The couple sold their home in Los Angeles to live in the Colorado mountains.
“We’d come up to Vail all the time when I was a kid,” said Aaron, who lives in nearby Eagle. “We took vacations all the time so it was a very natural transition for my dad to go from Los Angeles to Colorado.”
Aaron said his parents worked with the U.S. Forest Service to cut down beetle-infested pine trees and clear other vegetation. They also worked with Colorado State University, which had weather stations in the area. They consulted with the school on high-altitude farming.
The property is at roughly 9,000 feet in elevation. The family had a store for a while in Eagle where they sold home-harvested honey and produce from their farm and other area farms.
The Knapps wrote about their ranch in the book “Living Beneath the Colorado Peaks: The Story of Knapp Ranch.”
The site fronts about three-quarters of a mile of West Lake Creek. The ranch has senior water rights, ponds, creeks and aquatic systems.
The site also has a private trail network and is near world-class skiing, hiking and year-round amenities, the Mirr Ranch Group said. The ranch is within an hour of the Eagle County Regional Airport.
