The Quiet Koch Brother Builds His Own Private Wild West Town

Bill Koch, brother of notorious David and Charles Koch, generally minds his own business and stays away from politics and crony capitalism.

Instead of trying to muscle the entire world, he is really doing something quite sane with his money. He has bought land and building his own wild west town.

The Denver Post reports:

There's a new town in Colorado. It has about 50 buildings, including a saloon, a church, a jail, a firehouse, a livery and a train station. Soon, it will have a mansion on a hill so the town's founder can look down on his creation.

But don't expect to move here — or even to visit.

This town is billionaire Bill Koch's fascination with the Old West rendered in bricks and mortar. It sits on a 420-acre meadow on his Bear Ranch below the Raggeds Wilderness Area in Gunnison County. It's an unpopulated, faux Western town that might boggle the mind of anyone who ever had a playhouse. Its full-size buildings come with polished brass and carved-mahogany details and are fronted with board sidewalks and underpinned by a water-treatment system. A locked gate with guards screens who comes and goes...

Bill Koch has mostly made waves for collecting rare wine, winning the America's Cup sailing race and, most recently, buying up every bit of valuable Western memorabilia that comes up for sale.

He paid $2.3 million for a photograph of Billy the Kid at an auction last year. He bought out the Buckskin Joe Western town near Cañon City for $3.1 million in 2010. He owns Jesse James' gun, Wyatt Earp's vest, Sitting Bull's rifle and a flag that belonged to Gen. George Custer.

He has more Charles Russell paintings and Frederic Remington bronzes than most museums.

(Via Jaison De Montalegre)