Money is another differentiator. “We would expect to speak well to those clients who have the means to experience Ted’s landscapes exactly like Ted experiences them. So those are the folks that would stay in Ted’s Ladder house or go onto Ted’s private island or perhaps stay at Casa Grande in Vermejo,” Mokotoff says.
Room prices are as low as $145 per night at the Sierra Grande to $6,000 at the Ladder Ranch. Tour prices range from $150 to $600 per person.
Because of the privacy and quiet they afford, the locations are ideally suited for family office gatherings, foundation retreats or academic and organization meetings.
Net worth and adventure aptitude aside, there is a shared ethos on the Turner ranches. It seeps through every executive, every ranch hand, every staffer and even guests.
“Here’s the deal,” says Tom Waddell, the hard-worn cowboy who has managed Turner’s Armendaris Ranch for the past 22 years. “We’re all focused on putting Ted’s vision on the ground. Guests are now part of the team and so we hope will be their children. It’s long-term thinking.”
Steve Dobrott, the ranch manager at the Ladder Ranch, speaks of the painstaking effort that has gone into preserving the land there, bringing it back to the way it once was.
Biologists are nearly always on site. Land surveys, animal population tracking and vegetation diversity are constant projects. To accommodate the animals’ movements, or as it might be said, to let the buffalo roam, 250 miles of fencing was removed—a project that took three years. Universities regularly send students here to conduct scientific research. Innovative models for biodiversity have been developed. Studies on ways to shift resources have been devised. For example, diverting watering spots that predators utilize can spigot prey populations—important when there are mountain lions about.
The efforts are made to provide Earth the opportunity to make its own kind of balance. The payoffs are infective.
Coming around the bend of a dirt road to find a herd of bison peering at you above the tall grass, or watching a wild turkey dance its way over boulders, or matching your handprint to the bear claw marks on a tree, whose bark they use as a kind of aspirin (then trying it yourself), or discovering a shard of a Native American artifact on the ground, or a petroglyph on a stone, are sights and experiences that memory will serve up over and over again.
The land instills and attracts a certain kind of virtue—to live free, unbound.
Sir Richard Branson’s Spaceport is close by and “once they start space fights, the astronauts, or the clients of Virgin Galactic, will stay with us,” says Myra McNamara, general manager of the Sierra Grande Lodge and Spa.
There is a close relationship between the two billionaires, so much so that they even share a chef: Tatsu Miyazaki. He runs the restaurant at the Sierra Grande Lodge and caters Virgin Galactic affairs.
Turner Expeditions executives say many of the astronauts—who will pay up to of $250,000 for a spaceflight—will be coming to the area with large entourages, further bolstering tourism in the area, namely the expeditions.
For the original business disruptor, Turner is creating order, a natural order of ecosystems. On his land are flora, fauna and the found items of lost generations; dinosaur fossils were even recently discovered. Catch sight if you can. Visit if you might.
“For years, my family and I have wanted to give people the opportunity to visit and experience my properties that are so dear to us,” Turner says. “These places offer so much natural beauty, and the wildlife is just incredible. We hope that the people who do visit one of our properties enjoy themselves. But, almost as importantly, we hope that these properties ignite a deeper appreciation and love for nature, wildlife and our planet. I believe that if you grow to love something, you wish to protect it, not destroy it.”