$40M Cakebread Ranch Is Wyoming's Most Expensive House

Wyoming's most expensive listing went on the market two months ago, and it's ready for the next urban cowboy who also wants to garden, fly-fish, and raise cattle -- all while maintaining a sense of elegance and luxury.

Spanning 300 acres, the $40 million Cakebread Ranch in Thayne, WY, includes 4.5 miles of frontage on Salt River (home to brown and cutthroat trout), a wagyu cattle ranch, an organic vegetable garden, hiking and cross-country skiing trails, a farm-to-table restaurant, and all furnishings (yes, even the contemporary art!).

"It was built as a hobby," explains listing agent Paul Benson with Engel & Vlkers. Owners Steve and Jill Cakebread are also involved with Cakebread Cellars, a family-owned winery in California's Napa Valley. They took six years to create this masterpiece, which is so high-end that the Four Seasons Resort Jackson Hole offers private fly-fishing excursions to the ranch. A private airport (Star Valley Ranch Airport) is also just minutes away.

What makes the property unique is that the copper-roofed, three-bedroom, two-story main residence is "not a 10- or 20-room corporate retreat," says Benson, although there is room to build more housing options on the land.

Inside the 6,000-square-foot residence are a gym, an office, and an open kitchen outfitted with marble counters, custom cabinets, and a La Cornue oven. Design details include Italian-plaster walls, an imported French fireplace, and hickory floors that have been hand-tooled.

Also, "it's not something that needs to be upgraded or remodeled," he says, adding that it would cost between $35 million and $40 million to build a retreat like this from scratch. "It's one of the ultimate gentleman ranches, and you have all this privacy, yet you're 30 minutes from Jackson Hole," says Benson. "It's just so hard to get this amount of land that's privately owned."

Who might snap up the Cowboy State's most posh listing? Benson, who regularly sells luxury properties in Jackson Hole, thinks the ranch's remote location isn't a deal-breaker.

"The owners won't care that it's in Wyoming as they probably have a private jet," he says. But even so, the pool of eligible buyers is shallow: "There's only a few thousand people in the world (who are) what we like to call 'billionaire home collectors.'" For one of those real estate collectors, Cakebread Ranch is going to be a sweet slice of the Cowboy State.