Tour a Family-Owned Wild West Town With ‘Zillow Gone Wild’

Jack McBrayer’s hosting duties on Zillow Gone Wild, HGTV’s extended contemplation of the kookiest corners of the real estate market, have included exploring a two-story shoe, climbing sinister stairs to nowhere and conducting reconnaissance in a missile silo. In Saguache (pronounced “Saw-WATCH”), Colorado, the call of duty demands more from Jack than he’s ever given before: Yes, this is the episode in which he line dances.

Jack’s come to Saguache (an agricultural community with about 500 residents that’s three and a half hours from Denver) to explore Old Cow Town at Prior Ranch, a rustic reproduction of the kind of stagecoach-stop community that would have occupied the same spot a century and a half earlier. In addition to original cabins that actually date back to the 1880s, the 320-acre property features 21st-century versions of classic Western amenities that have hosted weddings, retreats, reunions — and the big, boisterous family that calls the whole place home. Come on down for a tour!

Meet Carl and Mary, proud parents of seven (now between the ages of 16 and 30) who lived in Park City, Utah, until … well, until their internet-savvy eldest daughter, Kennadi, read about this place. “[Carl] came home for lunch one day and I said, ‘Oh, Kennadi just sent us a new cabin to look at, let’s check it out!’” Mary recalled. “And what we thought was a cabin was instead a whole town.”

Purchased for $2.6 million, the property features a total of 18 bedrooms and 22 bathrooms over 28,715 square feet of interior space. “When I saw that [the listing was for] a Wild West town, it was so amazing we had to check it out,” Carl recalled. “It brought me back to when I was a kid growing up on a dairy farm; it felt like it was ours, it felt like it was a place we needed to be.”

If you fancy getting hitched at Old Cow Town, Carl and Mary have a stained-glass-spangled chapel for that. There are more than a dozen buildings on the property, including relatively run-of-the-mill residences (like a large house and a caretaker’s cabin) and more unusual installations (like the chapel, a cowboy bunkhouse and a museum).

“Do you live in all of them?” Jack asked.

“Take your pick! Depends on the mood!” Mary replied.

What good would all those hitching posts on the main street be if the town lacked overnight facilities for equine visitors? The grounds boast both a five-stall livery stable and a bigger barn with a total of 13 stalls; there’s plenty of room for the whole posse here and scenic riding trails as far as the eye can see.

At an elevation of about 7,700 feet above sea level, this part of southern Colorado is located just north of a valley formed by the San Juan Mountains (to the west) and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains (to the east). Temperatures here range from lows of about 10 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter to a breezy high of 72 degrees in the summer.

Don’t let the old-timey “Western Reserve” façade fool you: Previous owners (who named buildings throughout the property) styled this structure to look like a bank, but they built it to function as a dance hall. Ready to step inside? (This is unsubtle foreshadowing.)

“This is really a dance hall?” Jack marveled.

“It is,” confirmed Mattie, the second-youngest of Carl and Mary’s kids. “We host events here, we line dance here, and I think we’re going to teach you one.” Despite a bit of halfhearted hollering, Jack fell in line. At capacity, the building has space for 200 dancers to kick up their heels.

Though the town’s original owner-builder created a primary residence with some very memorable details (more on that in a moment), Mary, Carl and their kids currently live at their on-site hotel. "We could fit in [the other building]," Mary explained, "but this way everyone has their own bathroom.” The hotel has 10 beds and baths, so even a brood as large as theirs has room to put up their feet with space to spare.

“Because we have seven children — a large family — we always go big with everything. It doesn’t intimidate us,” Carl said. “We are always trying to make an adventure for our family!” The largest group they’ve hosted so far? A 50-person family reunion.

Though Carl and Mary had to make repairs to the property after purchase, they didn’t need to make renovations. “This is what it is!” Carl said. The hotel’s ornate ceiling tiles were imported from Italy, and each of its rooms retains its unique name (for legendary frontier figures like Annie Oakley, Doc Holliday or Jesse James).

“What’s y’all’s take on [the town]?” Jack asked Kennadi (seen here at hotel check-in). “You started all of this!”

She knew her folks well: “When I saw it, I was like, ‘This is crazy enough for my parents to want to buy this,’” she replied.

“Our goal is to bring people together,” Mary said. “We want family reunions to come, youth groups, weddings — we don’t want to make any money, we just want to charge what it costs to run the place.”

That cinematic swinging-through-the-saloon-doors moment central to countless Westerns is how family dinner begins here at the ranch. “We are in one of our favorite places in all of Prior Ranch [right now],” Mary said. “We eat all our meals here; there’s a restaurant-style kitchen in the back … and we just love to cook.”

“Family dinner is our favorite time,” second-youngest daughter Cassie told Jack — and it’s easy to see why. This gracious space is outfitted for a long evening’s worth of entertainment. It even features a pair of guest rooms at the top of the stairs for anyone who overdoes it on vittles.

Due to its location as a natural crossroads for everyone from Native Americans migrating from their summer to winter settlements to European explorers, fur trappers and prospectors, Saguache was a valuable waystation for centuries. Old Cow Town’s contemporary location is at the former Hoagland stop of the Barlow and Sanderson stagecoach line, a company that first carried mail during the Civil War and, by 1867, had a route that ran from Missouri all the way to California.

Two-wheeled buggies, four-wheeled carriages, prospecting tools, farm supplies and even antique stoves share space at the ranch. There’s quite a lot of that space to go around, mind you: The family is 5 miles from their nearest neighbor, and vast tracts of national forest and Bureau of Land Management conservation lands spread out in every direction.

Welcome to Ponderosa, the three-bedroom, three-bathroom log cabin named for its stunning materials and built to serve as the town’s main residence. Visitors who ring the bell to gain admittance through the intricately carved front doors hear, as Jack just did, one of six quite singular sounds. The doorbells include vocalizations by a wolf, a bear, a cougar and, in this case, an elk.

In addition to quite a bit of taxidermy, Ponderosa’s massive living room quite literally has a waterfall: Moisture trickles down the craggy stone wall behind Jack and into a stream that runs beneath the house. The property has a total of two ponds, two creeks and three wells.

Did we mention the trout? The reflective portion of the floor, seen here in the lower right corner of the room, is plate glass. Why plate glass? So you can look down and glimpse the golden, rainbow and cutbow trout swimming by, of course.