Genuine Wilderness

At the southern end of the Never Summer Range below Cascade Mountain lies a beloved place called Vagabond Ranch. Bill and Willow creeks meet just upstream of a wooden bridge on the property. Listen and you will hear the cleansing sounds of nature.

Vagabond Ranch is an inholding, an area of private property surrounded by the Arapaho National Forest, with water rights for household, pond, pastoral, and irrigation.

There are cabins from the 1890s to the 1990s: Ranch House (the main house), a large log house for a caretaker or guests (Cascade), a maintenance building (Gravel) with generators, inverters, batteries and miscellaneous maintenance equipment, a dining hall, once a gathering place for boys and girls on vagabond adventures to explore and appreciate the grand West, Parkview Cabin (circa 1923), Riverview Cabin, a corral, a shed built in 2016 which once served as a log structure for an outdoor furnace, a barn foundation, and falling into history, Porphyry, Trappers, Wranglers, and Hill cabins, and a gazebo, lovingly built by Charlie Pavek for his wife, Veronica. 

The Vagabond buildings are all in decline. Extensive remodeling in the 1990s under stellar stewardship by the Kelleys is showing wear.  It's the incomparable land, the rushing water and the privacy: a perfect sweep of the eye from meadows to mountain views, the rush of two year-round creeks, Bill and Willow, and two seasonal creeks, Loyal and Ashbrook. It's the breathtaking morning light and the afternoon glow on Cascade Mountain, practically in the front yard, and the views of Porphyry, Gravel, and Parkview mountains that make this place remarkable. Once you're here, you do not want to leave.  

The ranch is entirely off-grid; it uses no commercial electricity. There are 15 structures on the ranch. Three - Ranch House, Cascade, and Gravel - are used year-round as a private home, a guest house, and a maintenance building.

Each of these is equipped with 1000-gallon propane tanks, (one at Cascade, two underground at Ranch House, three at Gravel).  

Off-Grid Living

Ranch House is home to the owners who have a sentimental attachment to its origins, one having laid the rocks for the foundation in 1955 with a group of other kids.  Cascade is a guest house. Gravel, the maintenance building, contains three generators, which come to life automatically as necessary. Gravel also contains 48 large batteries and inverters which supply electricity throughout the ranch. The switch from one to another is done manually. The Cummins generator comes to life automatically when the batteries need charging and when the sixteen solar panels are unable to satisfy demand. Generator #2 is primary. If it fails, generator #1 serves to handle the load. Generator #3 is an emergency fallback and hasn’t been used in the almost eight years we’ve been here.

Location & Acreage

Some folks buy thousands of acres to insure privacy and isolation. In a sense, Vagabond Ranch is that way as well. It is 108 acres of private property in the midst of 700+ thousand acres of the Arapaho National Forest. You buy the 108+ acres and enjoy thousands of acres of wilderness.

Night times are clear beyond description. There is no light pollution. Starlight provides natural illumination. The Big Dipper is seen through a bedroom skylight during the winter time.

Located on the headwaters of the Willow Creek drainage, 4 miles east of Colorado route 125,  23.5 miles north northwest of Granby and 11 miles west of Grand Lake, the ranch, at elevation 9200-9300+ feet, is truly off by itself. It’s so remote the County says we can use Granby or Grand Lake as our address. Seems like only Tom at UPS and Joni at Fed Ex know where we are.

We hope the new stewards cherish the land and its history.

Vagabond Ranch sold 12/29/22.

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