“There’s a new town in Colorado. It has about 50 buildings, including a saloon, a church, a jail, a firehouse, a livery and a train station. Soon, it will have a mansion on a hill so the town’s founder can look down on his creation,” according to the Denver Post
“But don’t expect to move here — or even to visit.
“This town is billionaire Bill Koch’s fascination with the Old West rendered in bricks and mortar. It sits on a 420-acre meadow on his Bear Ranch below the Raggeds Wilderness Area in Gunnison County. It’s an unpopulated, faux Western town that might boggle the mind of anyone who ever had a playhouse. Its full-size buildings come with polished brass and carved-mahogany details and are fronted with board sidewalks and underpinned by a water-treatment system. A locked gate with guards screens who comes and goes.
“Koch’s project manager has told county officials that the enclave in the middle of the 6,400-acre Bear Ranch won’t ever be open to the public. It is simply for Koch’s amusement and for that of his family and friends — and historians. It is the ultimate repository for his huge collection of Western memorabilia.
“‘It’s the kind of stuff I guess you would expect a billionaire to construct. It’s like something out of a ‘Gunsmoke’ movie set,’ said Ramon Reed, chairman of the Gunnison County Planning Commission.
The rest of the article is here.
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I’m thinking a movie set. “Shoot Out at the Old Koch Corral”. You name the headliners.
Brokeback Mountain? Which Brother Gets To Dress Up As Calamity Jane? I Love Me Some Calamity Jane!
I see almost everything like this as a violence against those who are starving to death all over the planet. Today alone tens of thousands of people will die because their internal organs stop working due to lack of nutrients and these two heirs have so much money they can afford to waste it on a place like this they will visit a couple days a year.
http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats
Bill Koch can name anybody he wants to be the Sheriff in “his” little Western town. Isn’t that enough? LOL!
I would post the you tube clip from Blazing Saddles here….but why feed the pigs!
And to think he did it all selling buttwipe. The paper aisle is mostly owned by Georgia Pacific, with many different and apparently competing brands names, all filling his coffers. Shop carefully, Scott is not Koch, AFAIK.