At the time Sharon Magness Blake’s first husband, Tele-Communications Inc. founder Bob Magness, died in 1996, she estimates they had a ranch with about 900 Arabian horses. She continued racing for about five years after her husband’s death, she says, “but then it became overwhelming.”

Magness Blake began to sell the horses off, and by the time she began looking for a new ranch in 2002 with her future husband Ernie Blake, “I only had about 30 horses,” she says. Of the steeds she kept, one was of particular importance: Thunder, the official mascot of the Denver Broncos.

Since the early 1990s, she and her husband had been the owner of the pro football mascot. Unofficially, Magness Blake says, there are actually four Thunders. The first died seven years ago; the second is retired; the third is on active duty—he leads the team onto the field before each game, and every time they score he carries a flag down the field—and the fourth is in training. (She refers to them as Thunder 1, Thunder 2, Thunder 3, and Thunder 4.)

So the Blakes’ new ranch wouldn’t just be for their vacations, it would be for the Thunders, too.

The Ranch
After a search, they found a 255-acre ranch about an hour and a half drive from Denver. It had been developed in the ’90s by two Texan friends who’d each built their own houses on the property about a quarter-mile apart.

“For us it was just perfect,” says Ernie Blake, a retired attorney and the onetime mayor of Breckenridge, Colo. “One of the houses we call the main house, and that’s our home, and the other we call the guest house,” and use it for their frequent visitors.                     

Magness Blake says they spent about $11 million to purchase the property, and they moved in in 2003. Almost immediately, they set about making improvements that she estimates cost another $6 million to $7 million. Most of the additions were horse-related, including adding stables directly to the house so Thunder 3 was never far away. “I guess it’s more of a pet-type thing,” she says. “We’re really close to him.”

That Thunder, currently employed as a mascot, grew up on the ranch, she says, though Thunder 4 is training elsewhere.

The Blakes, Thunder in tow, would go to the ranch for some relaxation and horse riding, but at this point, Magness Blake says, “we have a huge life in Denver, and we don’t get there as much.” As a consequence, they’ve put the Silverthorne ranch on the market with Jack Wolfe of LIV Sotheby’s International Realty for $23 million.

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