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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWilliam Koch Builds Frontier Town All His Own Near Aspen
Source: Bloomberg
Energy billionaire William Koch is developing a private 19th-century Western village, with a saloon, a jail and a train station, high in the Rocky Mountains in a region pockmarked with historic ghost towns that died when the mines that supported them played out.
Koch, 72, who made his fortune partly by developing underground coal deposits in Somerset, Colorado, is building the out-of-the-way oasis at his nearby Bear Ranch, a working cattle operation southwest of Aspen. The compound will also include a 21,762-square-foot mansion with an elevator, a wine room and his-and-hers mud rooms overlooking the 50-building frontier town. A third of the house will be underground.
Koch is a collector of Old West memorabilia, including the only known photograph of Billy the Kid, which he bought for $2.3 million at a Denver auction last year. He plans to open the make-believe town solely to his family and friends, not the public, said Brad Goldstein, a spokesman for the company Koch founded, West Palm Beach, Florida-based Oxbow Carbon LLC.
... A land-swap deal Koch proposed to insulate his frontier town, which sits at the foot of the picturesque Ragged Mountains, an area popular with hunters and anglers, is sharply dividing organic farmers, miners and retirees who populate the region's blue-collar communities.
Read more: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/billionaire-koch-builds-frontier-town-040100137.html
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)Javaman
(62,534 posts)nanabugg
(2,198 posts)I love it!!! They love Koch and they get what they deserve. His money is doing to them what it is doing to the rest of the country.
LiberalEsto
(22,845 posts)Out of bounds to all, including food delivery vehicles.
TBF
(32,090 posts)than feeding, housing, and educating folks. Thank god our billionaires have their priorities in order.
KharmaTrain
(31,706 posts)...rather than use that money to pollute the political system.
Honestly...if this dude wants to spend billions in creating his own wild west town and is willing to spend millions to rehabiliate or preserve old artifacts, I'm all for it. A billionaire needs a hobby and this one sounds a lot safer and more productive than trying to buy off legislatures.
Also...at 72, Koch will hopefully "koch" the bucket in the not too distant future and the land will probably taken over by some state or municipality and opened to the public.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)This extravagance in the mountain is mostly a cowboy version of a George Pullman neo-feudal fantasy.
The real dangers are in the remodeling that Koch has planned for DC.
marmar
(77,090 posts)Junkdrawer
(27,993 posts)Remember the "News on the March" scene?
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1088098892660
surrealAmerican
(11,364 posts)There would be a sort of poetic justice if he wound up spending the rest of his life locked in his own "quaint" jail, instead of the mansion.
DBoon
(22,397 posts)and acting out the massacre of striking coal miners for his amusement?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre
sadbear
(4,340 posts)MineralMan
(146,329 posts)TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)Or is he just going to live near, and show off to friends, an empty, non-functioning collection of buildings? Money truly does strange things to people.
sadbear
(4,340 posts)Hubert Flottz
(37,726 posts)Mitt is an abolitionist who will abolish freedom in his second term.
global1
(25,270 posts)William Koch as the eccentric rich villain that wants to take over the world.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)I don't know if there is any credible research on this particular subject, but I suspect that on average, over the course of a year, 1 wealthy individual consumes the same amount of natural resources as 30 - 50 working class/middle class individuals. This may be a low estimate.
Since the overwhelming majority of wealthy individuals are conservatives, I doubt that their voracious appetite for destruction concerns these wealthy conservatives in the slightest.
The wealthy buy our governments without our consent, and subsequently prevent us from bringing about necessary environmentally friendly regulations and socio-economic systems through transparent democratic processes. They use their wealth to maintain political control, thereby sustaining their destructive sources of profit and gluttonous lifestyles, in their own selfish interests, to the detriment of every other living creature on the planet.
William Koch is a prime example of these wealthy individuals who are responsible for selfishly destroying our planet without conscience.
Personally, I don't care about how much money someone has.
What I do care about is that it gives them the ability to personally cause massive, wanton waste of resources and environmental destruction, and that they use the privileges of wealth and power to destroy the planet without reservation.
The adults on the planet desperately need to find a way to prevent the thoughtless children on the planet from playing with weapons.
hatrack
(59,592 posts)Jesus, all that money, and this is the best he can come up with? Pathetic.
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)What did Koch do with his money?
He built a Western Epcot.
What a doofus.
I guess having a billion or three does not give one vision.
t16hilos
(12 posts)This Koch project brings to mind that creepy short story: "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_as_Big_as_the_Ritz