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Round Mountain Ranch sells for $11 million

Teresa Ristow
The 1,100-acre Round Mountain Ranch was sold Oct. 9 for $11 million. The ranch features several residences, including the Bell Tower House, designated as the owner's home.
Courtesy Photo

— The 1,100-acre Round Mountain Ranch near Clark has sold to a Wisconsin farmer for $11 million.

The ranch has been on the market for roughly a decade, according to Ranch Marketing Associates Broker Christy Belton, who represented the buyer in the Oct. 9 sale.

The property was listed as Three Waters Ranch and offered for $12 million by Hall and Hall real estate group.



More than a mile of the Elk River, a connected fishing stream and a spring-fed lake are on the expansive property bordering the Routt National Forest 14 miles outside of Steamboat Springs.

“What attracted the buyer was the fact that it was a working cattle property and the border to the national forest,” Belton said.



Routt County records list the buyer as Rooney’s Round Mountain Ranch LLC, a company registered in September in Wisconsin to Steven R. Rooney.

Rooney is the owner of Rooney Farms in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, which produces non-GMO soybeans shipped to Asia as well as corn and wheat.

The company was named Business of the Year in 2014 by the Chippewa County Economic Development Corp.

Belton said the ranch was operating up until the time of the sale and will continue to operate with existing management.

The buyer “did keep management in place,” Belton said. “This property had a long history of being a very productive ranch.”

In addition to ranch facilities for cattle and haying operations, the property has a large, fully-enclosed indoor equestrian arena.

A three-bedroom, three-bath 5,126-square-foot owners home has three fireplaces and includes a bell tower. Other residences on the property are a 4,000-square-foot, two-story log home designed for a ranch manager, two additional staff houses and three guest cabins.

The property is protected by a conservation easement with the Colorado Cattleman’s Agricultural Land Trust, which allows the construction of one new residence on the land while the rest remains protected from development.

The ranch’s many improvements and the conservation easement were part of the reason the property was listed for so many years, said Jeff Buerger, the Hall and Hall broker representing the seller.

“Ranches that have an abundance of improvements can be challenging to sell,” Buerger said. “It’s a very diverse ranch with many attributes.”

One unique improvement was a 3/4-mile sight-fishing stream the previous owner had built.

The property was sold by a company owned by Dan Souders and was featured as the “House of the Day” in the Wall Street Journal in 2010.

The feature said that Sounders primarily lived in Boulder and used the main house on the ranch as a second home. It also said that the property was on the market in 2007 for $20 million and had dropped to an asking price of $16.9 million at the time of the feature.

Belton said the sale for $11 million represented a recent trend of buyers and sellers seeing eye to eye.

“The gap between buyer and seller expectations seem to be getting smaller,” she said. “Properties that have been on the market for years are starting to sell.”

To reach Teresa Ristow, call 970-871-4206, email tristow@SteamboatToday.com or follow her on Twitter @TeresaRistow


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