And in the 1990s, Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, then married, set out to restore it Four hours from the Denver airport and 45 minutes from Raton, New Mexico, the closest one-horse town, we reach the gate of Vermejo. It?s early March. The bison are hours away on the south end of the property now, but the elk roam in big groups, bounding across the gravel road in front of our car, dropping their giant antlers one at a time in the snowmelt, as they do every spring.
Vermejo, a ranch and ecological reserve is massive?the size of the Badlands, Acadia, Redwood, and Zion National Parks combined?and we are making our way to its heart, where a rustic central lodge and various beautiful sandstone cottages have hosted adventurous travelers, almost continuously, for a century. Today, the property belongs to the American billionaire and media mogul Ted Turner. A conservator who has collected more than a million acres of ranch land across the American West, he bought it in 1996 with the intention of preserving and protecting the wilderness indefinitely. Effectively, Turner?s Vermejo is a moment frozen in time: the moment in 1909 just after the property?s first owner, Chicago grain magnate William H. Bartlett, opened the doors of his personal paradise.

Jen Judge, courtesy of Vermejo, a Ted Turner Reserve
Casa Grande?s Great Room still contains books brought to the property by the original owner in the early 1900s.

Courtesy Vermejo, a Ted...