Cottonwood Creek Ranch is 6,400 acres of creek bottom, grass and timber below the Crazy Mountains, under a conservation easement and offered at $18,500,000. We sell three or four ranches a year, and we tell each one in full before anyone is asked to drive out.
Plate 1. Cottonwood Creek from the east bench, looking north in mid October.
I grew up on a cow-calf outfit on the Boulder River and spent nine years as a ranch appraiser before I sold my first place. That job taught me what a buyer’s banker will ask, and the ranch taught me what a family is really giving up.
Since 2009 Fieldnote has placed 31 ranches, a little over 118,000 acres, most of them with families who had owned them for three generations or more. We take on a few at a time. Each one gets a written property book, maps drawn from the survey and the water decree, and photographs taken across the seasons.
June Hale, broker and founder. Lic. #000000 (sample)
The property book
This is the short version of the 64-page book we send to qualified buyers. The map follows along as you read.
The ranch lies in one block, which is rarer than it sounds out here. You come in off County Road 25 on a two-mile lane, drop onto the hay meadows along the creek, and climb south through three benches of bunchgrass to a line of Douglas fir at the top of the place.
Nothing has been split off in 115 years. The Brekkes bought out three neighbouring homesteads in the 1930s and have not sold an acre since, so the fences follow the old section lines and the gates are where Anders Brekke hung them.
Cottonwood Creek runs 4.2 miles through the ranch and Lodgepole Creek 2.7, meeting a quarter mile below the headquarters. The Cottonwood right carries an 1889 priority date for 14 cubic feet per second, senior to every user downstream for eleven miles. In the dry summer of 2021 the Brekkes were still irrigating in August when the valley below had been shut off for a month.
That water puts up 620 acres of flood-irrigated hay, about 1,400 tons in an ordinary year. Eleven springs are recorded on the place, and three stock reservoirs hold water on the upper benches through the fall.
Anders Brekke proved up on 320 acres here in 1911, after two winters in a dugout on the creek bank. His barn went up that summer from timber cut on the south hills.
The ruts of the old Big Timber freight road still cross the north pasture. Four generations of Brekkes have run cattle on the place, and the family ledgers from 1914 on come with the sale.
The herd winters on the south-facing slopes from December into April, and the state counts them from the air each February. Mule deer use the creek bottoms year round, sharp-tailed grouse dance on the east bench in April, and Lodgepole Creek holds a small run of native cutthroat trout.
The easement protects the winter range as open grass for good. The Brekkes have allowed family and a few neighbours to hunt, and that choice passes to the next owner.
The easement was granted in 2019. The family has already taken its tax benefit, and the asking price reflects the restriction. A buyer gets a working ranch that cannot be subdivided, with room for one more home.
Sent after a short call and proof of funds. It includes the survey, the water decree and the recorded easement.
$4,250,000
1,180 acres, Park County. Four chapters, 38 pages.
A horse place on a gravel bench above the Yellowstone, with 1.1 miles of spring creek that stays open through January. Twelve-stall barn, a round pen, and hay ground that has been cut by the same neighbour since 1994.
Ask for the Willow Bench book
$5,900,000
3,050 acres, Wheatland County. Three chapters, 26 pages.
Native grass that has never been plowed, one windmill, one stock tank and no house. It runs about 220 pairs in summer and would suit a family ranch next door or a buyer who wants to put it under easement.
Ask for the Antelope Draw bookFor the first sixty days a ranch is shown only to buyers who have sent proof of funds and sat down with me. Most of our ranches sell inside that window. No sign goes on the gate unless the family wants one.
Where there is time, we photograph a place through a whole year before the book is written: first cutting, shipping day, the elk coming down. Buyers who live two states away should see what February looks like.
I have worked through eleven conservation easements with four land trusts. I sit down with your attorney and your CPA, explain what an easement does to value and to use, and leave the tax advice to them.
Siblings in three cities, a manager who has been there thirty years, a parent who is not ready. Meetings happen at the kitchen table, as many of them as it takes, and nobody learns about the sale from a listing.
Prices are withheld at the families’ request. This is a sample record for a concept site.
| Year | Ranch | County | Acres | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Sixmile Ranch | Park County | 2,240 | Sold to the neighbouring family |
| 2025 | Lindqvist Place | Stillwater County | 3,600 | Sold to a conservation buyer |
| 2025 | Bridger Bench | Gallatin County | 880 | Easement placed, then sold |
| 2024 | Upper Boulder | Sweet Grass County | 5,120 | Sold privately, never listed |
| 2023 | Dry Fork | Wheatland County | 9,400 | Sold to a ranching family from Alberta |
| 2022 | Tenmile Springs | Carbon County | 1,460 | Transferred to a land trust |
June walked the whole north fence with Dad before she wrote a single word. By the time the book came out, he said she knew the place better than two of his kids.
In confidence
Whether you are looking for a ranch or wondering what yours might be worth to the right family, the first conversation stays between us. Nobody will call you unless you ask.