cowboydoc
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Re: Who\'s Got the Most Acreage?
Joe,
You are sure right about water rights!!! It gets worse every year as the population continues to grow in the west. Even with the water rights it's tough in some of the areas. Down at the place on the snake river by Oreanna Idaho Power Company charges us 30k just to turn the pumps on for the irrigation system. All the water there has to be pumped from the river for irrigation. That is one thing I like about the midwest is that you don't have to irrigate everything.
Back in the early 70's my grandpa and uncle started buying up all the land on Antelope Range. Everyone thought they were crazy as there was no water up there and you could only run a cow/calf pair on about 50 acres or better. Well they had a plan. They bought about 30,000 acres up there for little of nothing, I think it equaled out to about $100 an acre. They had studied the land and done surveys on some of the flat ground at the base of the mountains and figured they could build a dam and reservoir and irrigate that ground around there. Sure enough they were right and they spent the next 10 years building the dam and reservoir. That land is worth alot now, not to mention they created a huge reservoir and stocked it with trout which they sell fishing rights to.
Those two did alot of those deals. There were seven brothers and one sister and they all got into ranching out there. All of them did really well but my grandpa and great uncle did the best.
Joe,
You are sure right about water rights!!! It gets worse every year as the population continues to grow in the west. Even with the water rights it's tough in some of the areas. Down at the place on the snake river by Oreanna Idaho Power Company charges us 30k just to turn the pumps on for the irrigation system. All the water there has to be pumped from the river for irrigation. That is one thing I like about the midwest is that you don't have to irrigate everything.
Back in the early 70's my grandpa and uncle started buying up all the land on Antelope Range. Everyone thought they were crazy as there was no water up there and you could only run a cow/calf pair on about 50 acres or better. Well they had a plan. They bought about 30,000 acres up there for little of nothing, I think it equaled out to about $100 an acre. They had studied the land and done surveys on some of the flat ground at the base of the mountains and figured they could build a dam and reservoir and irrigate that ground around there. Sure enough they were right and they spent the next 10 years building the dam and reservoir. That land is worth alot now, not to mention they created a huge reservoir and stocked it with trout which they sell fishing rights to.
Those two did alot of those deals. There were seven brothers and one sister and they all got into ranching out there. All of them did really well but my grandpa and great uncle did the best.
