William Bruce Harrison, scion to one of Texas’ original oil fortunes, has purchased the storied 83,000-acre Cielo Vista Ranch in the San Luis Valley, according to Costilla County property records. The property sold last month after listing for $105 million, but the buyer and sales price were not disclosed at that time.
The address of the new owner — a Delaware-registed limited liability company named Cielo Vista Ranch II — traces back to the Houston office of Cathexis Oil & Gas LLC, an investment firm founded by Harrison in 2010.
Harrison’s father, billionaire oil and ranching baron Bruce Harrison, passed away in 2004 at age 54 when his son was only 17. According to a lawsuit he filed against his uncle, who was trustee and executor of his father’s estate, Harrison was scheduled to receive his inheritance when he turned 30 in 2017.
Cathexis has investments in real estate, construction and oil and gas. The company is partnered with Houston developer Midway on a planned Houston complex that could include 8 million square feet of shops, offices and entertainment venues, according to reports in the Houston Chronicle. Cathexis last year orchestrated a hostile takeover of international construction services firm ISG, which was reportedly worth more than $100 million.
Cielo Vista Ranch has a storied history in the San Luis Valley. The 83,368-acre property stretches across more than 20 miles of Sangre de Cristo ridgeline and includes the 14,047-foot Culebra Peak and 18 13,000-foot peaks. In the mid 1800s, Mexico granted the property to a French Canadian trapper who then doled out deeds to Mexican and Spanish settlers in an effort to colonize the San Luis Valley before Colorado was a U.S. state. In 1960, lumberman Jack Taylor bought the property and closed the ranch, irking families of those settlers who had used the property for grazing, logging, hunting and fishing. The ensuing range war lasted three decades before the Colorado Supreme Court settled the dispute by restoring wood gathering and limited grazing rights to heirs of the original settlers but denying hunting rights.
Enron executive Lou Pai, who bought the Taylor Ranch in 1988 for $20 million, sold the ranch for $60 million in 2004 to a group of Texas investors who changed the name of the property to Cielo Vista. The price of the sale from those investors to Harrison was not disclosed in county records. But with a $105 million listing price, it’s a safe bet that the deal marked the largest ranch sale so far in 2017.
The broker who negotiated the sale for the Mirr Ranch Group said in a statement following the August deal that the new, unidentified owner was “a true conservationist … deeply committed to preserving this national treasure and extraordinary resource.” Climbers who count Culebra as an important peak in the state’s collection of fourteeners have traditionally been allowed access to the summit for a $150 fee.
The ranch’s website — which also offers guided five-day elk hunts for $10,000 — notes that there was no allowed climbing access in August. But a statement from a representative of the new owner said the ranch will continue access programs that allowed climbing on Culebra Peak.
Emails and calls to the Cathexis offices were not returned but an email from a Houston law firm Jackson Walker representing the new owners of the ranch said “as of this time, the owner has no plans to change such access.”