Billionaire Koch Builds Frontier Town All His Own Near Aspen
August 23rd, 2012Via: Bloomberg:
Energy billionaire William Koch is developing a private 19th-century Western village, with a saloon, a jail and a train station, high in the Rocky Mountains in a region pockmarked with historic ghost towns that died when the mines that supported them played out.
Koch, 72, who made his fortune partly by developing underground coal deposits in Somerset, Colorado, is building the out-of-the-way oasis at his nearby Bear Ranch, a working cattle operation southwest of Aspen. The compound will also include a 21,762-square-foot mansion with an elevator, a wine room and his-and-hers mud rooms overlooking the 50-building frontier town. A third of the house will be underground.
Koch is a collector of Old West memorabilia, including the only known photograph of Billy the Kid, which he bought for $2.3 million at a Denver auction last year. He plans to open the make-believe town solely to his family and friends, not the public, said Brad Goldstein, a spokesman for the company Koch founded, West Palm Beach, Florida-based Oxbow Carbon LLC.
“Remember, he’s using that as his home,” Goldstein said. “Mr. Koch has offered to show the public his collection of Western artifacts here in Palm Beach and he intends to do it in Washington at the Smithsonian. There’s nothing, with the exception of the buildings, that the public isn’t going to be able to see in those exhibits.”
Goldstein declined to discuss details about the town, including whether it would house Koch’s Western art collection, saying to do so would be “just giving an art thief a road map to steal something.” Bear Ranch Project Manager Tom Newland also declined to comment, citing an agreement with Koch that “I’m not to discuss the project at all.”
