Review: Vermejo

Ted Turner’s Vermejo is the closest thing to a private national park. Roughly 550,000 acres draped across the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Vermejo is the largest privately owned ranch in the U.S., spanning two states (New Mexico and Colorado) and encompassing several early 1900’s coal-mining and saw-mill towns, as well as Anasazi-era cliff dwellings. The recently restored Casa Grande, a stone-walled, seven-bedroom mansion, is one of nine lodgings on the ranch, and its most storied. Built in 1909 for a Chicago businessman, it was sold after his death to Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler in 1926, whose regular guests included Herbert Hoover, Cecil B. DeMille, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. The grandeur of the mansion hearkens back to this era, from the marble-pillared great room’s dining room table outfitted in china and crystal to the grand piano. The property languished between several owners, and it was Turner who had the vision to turn the sprawling property into a modern-day conservation-minded ranch. Fly-fishing season is from May to September and the property offers endless amounts of hiking. Staying at Casa Grande gives you a taste of what Fairbanks et al. might have experienced back in the mansion’s heyday – rooms are impeccably done in European antiques and toiles, private dining room service is available if you don’t want to join the others at the main lodge (the bison burger, crispy buttermilk marinated quail, and fresh-caught trout are musts), and staff can bring you a G+T on the porch as you watch the wildlife creep out of the woods at sundown.