The term "amenity ranch" is a part of the modern vocabulary of the West, and the mind's eye is replete with a thousand slick ads in a hundred different magazines: a huge log mansion, picture windows warmly alight, a trout river flowing majestically with towering snow-covered peaks beyond. The fields are lush and green. The scenes of western agriculture as we have come to know it are absent from the vision.

But as land prices in the most scenic and still accessible parts of the west reach astronomical levels, a new breed of amenity ranch buyers is emerging, casting about for land far from the luxury hotspots like Jackson Hole or Big Sky.

This new breed has been priced out of those places, and many of them don't seem to care about that. They don't need ski-town ambiance, wealthy neighbors, or even rushing streams full of native trout. They just want the commodity that is perhaps the fastest disappearing one on earth -- big private spaces, clean air, a place to hunt big game and upland birds and waterfowl.

Once-forgotten farm and ranch land in the plains of the West is teeming with these amenities and often sells for a price that -- for now -- pales in comparison to what's being sold in the Jackson Holes and Big Skies of the region. Over the past decade, many of these properties have been made even more desirable by enrollment in the federal Conservation Reserve Program or the Wetlands Reserve Program or the availability of Conservation Easements, or a combination of all three -- all of which encourage more wildlife habitat while providing either per-acre payments or tax breaks for buyers... Read Full Article.

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