Mary Walker was filled with sadness last fall as she left the ranch that her great-great aunt Margaret Duncan Brown and her husband, Thornton “Dick” Brown purchased in 1915, to spend the winter in Tucson, Arizona.

The Brown Ranch, located just outside of Clark, has been woven into Routt County’s ranching heritage for 109 years, and was placed on a list of Centennial Ranches and Farms in Colorado in 2019. Several buildings on the property have historic structures designation including the homestead cabin, the bunkhouse and icehouse.

“My Aunt Madge homesteaded it, and she worked her ass off for over 50 years and she left my family with a completely debt free piece of property of over 700 acres,” Walker said of her great-great aunt Margaret Brown, who went by Aunt Madge. “It’s the end of a line and it’s just sad, very sad.”

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The ranch had been passed down through the family for generations, but has been owned by six Brown’s heirs, each holding a different percentage of the property since 1987. Walker and her husband, Michael Abrahams, have been living and caring for the property since 1987, but they decided to move out of the main house and off the property last fall when the sale seemed imminent.

“I’ve been living out there since 1987,” Walker sad. “My husband and I left in the fall, because that was about the only thing we could control was the timing of us leaving. We left in the fall because trying to move out in the middle of winter was obviously not going to work.”

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The Brown Ranch, which has no connection to the property that City of Steamboat is looking to annex for an affordable housing project, was put on the market in mid-December, and went under contract almost immediately.

The ranch was sold to Round Mountain Ranch V LLC for $14 million dollars. Dan Souders, who is listed as the agent on the Limited Liability Company, sold 1,100-acres in North Routt County in 2014.

The Brown Ranch transaction was reported in the real estate transactions of the Steamboat Pilot & Today on March 4, and included the historic 1,344-square-foot homestead cabin where Walker and her husband have lived for the past 37 years, as well as the historic bunkhouse and icehouse and more than 700 acres of ranchlands that span both sides of Routt County Road 129.

“Essentially what happened is about two years ago a cousin of mine who owns 5% filed a partition action,” Walker said. “Basically, a partition action determines whether a piece of property can be divided up in kind, or has to be sold.”

Walker said because the land was so variable, there was no way to divide the property in an equitable way and the family decided to settle instead of continuing to move through the extensive, costly and exhausting process. The settlement led to the sale of the land.

“If I had the kind of money some people have I would have bought out my entire family,” Walker said. “But that obviously wasn’t going to happen. It took almost a year of court proceedings before we even started talking settlement.”

Walker will receive her share of the sale of the ranch, but said she is sad that the ranch her great-great Aunt Madge and Uncle “Dick” Thornton sought out in the early 1900’s as a way to find a more relaxed and down-to-earth lifestyle away from the hustle and bustle of the mining world of Cripple Creek, is being sold.

“They bought the original, the first chunk, in 1915, and then he died in the 1918 (Spanish) flu epidemic,” Walker said. “So she (Margaret Duncan Brown) stays on, adds acreage to the homestead and starts to run sheep. She increased the size to more than 700 acres over the years until she died in 1965.”

Walker said her great-great aunt’s decision to live and ranch alone after her husband’s death, and her ability to manage and grow the sheep operations, made her legendary in Routt County. The words she wrote in her journals and diaries where compiled after her death and passed along to future generations in the pages of the book, “Shepherdess of Elk River Valley.”

Through the generations, Walker said family and hundreds of friends and relations have enjoyed the ranch, its incredible history and beauty. She has been told by realtors that it is a hunting and fishing paradise. She said she has no idea what the new owners plan to do with the property and didn’t want to speculate.

Walker said she has no plans to return to the area and said the idea of living in Steamboat Springs is simply too painful. Her plan is to come to Steamboat Springs this spring to take care of some in-person details, but she said she will not make the drive up 129.

“When people would always ask if we were still living in North Routt our answer was always ‘if we’re not living in North Routt, then we’re not living here’,” Walker said. “It would be way too painful for me to live in Steamboat, way too painful.”

Her hope is that her great-great aunt and her family have left a legacy that will live on in the valley. That’s what’s truly important for her.

“I just think Aunt Madge’s legacy, that personal legacy of how hard she worked for so long as a single woman raising sheep. There were other sheep ranches out there, but hers was one of the largest with 800 head of sheep at one point,” Walker said. “The property itself it’s land, it’s beauty, but it’s really sad that the name Margaret Duncan Brown just kind of ends. It’s that loss of the legacy of an individual in our community, and that’s really sad.”

Arianthé Stettner, Emeritus Director with Historic Routt County, said the Brown Ranch’s Centennial Ranch designation is honorary and offers little, or no protection for the historic buildings on the property.

“It can no longer be a Centennial Ranch because it’s out of the family,” Stettner said. “Maybe one of the neighbors is retrieving the Centennial Ranch sign because it’s a moot point. It’s not in the family — it’s gone.”

Stettner said Walker and her husband have been exceptional stewards of the Brown Ranch over the decades, maintaining the house, out-buildings and personal mementos inside. She added that the Brown Ranch is not the only historic landmark that has recently found new owners, and that changes are in the air across Routt County.

“Having lived here over 52 years, I am seeing this happen multiple times now and with a great deal of sadness,” Stettner said. “I don’t have the money to buy up and keep these ranches and historic buildings personally. All we can do is hope that these new generations have a preservation ethic, care about these lands and these buildings and have a sense of stewardship. If they don’t have it, then the money wins out.”