Word: ranches
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...Bush's ranch and Cheney's house use geothermal energy. Why not their offices...
...Hold on!" yells Rhonda Stelmach as she guns her four-wheeler up a hill on her 300-acre ranch near Boerne, Texas. Limestone rocks fly as the ATV chews up the steep slope. Ahead of her, a pair of African gemsbok antelope are running. At the summit, she pauses to drink in the view--and the silence--while the gemsboks peer at her from behind a live oak. "It was their hill before, but now we all share," she says, pointing out the sable and red lechwe antelope hiding nearby...
Ground zero for ranch mania is the hill country. Since 1994, the rugged, picturesque hills west of Austin and San Antonio have been Texas' hottest destination for retirees and investors alike--in large part because of its temperate climate. Tech millionaires from Dell, Compaq and Microsoft, tobacco-settlement lawyers, oil- and gasmen (back in the money, thanks to the California energy crisis) have all snapped up parcels from 50 acres to 100 acres, replacing ranch houses with mansions, throwing up 10-ft.-high fences to corral herds of exotic animals--and changing a way of life forever. There are traffic...
...country clubs with private jetports. "People have built castles, actual castles," says Kerr County's chief appraiser, Fourth Coates. "They even change the direction of streams." Take the Stelmachs, for example. Rhonda, a decorator, and her husband Leigh, an executive with Dollar General Store in Tennessee, bought their lavish ranch two years ago, right after it was featured on a glossy Texas Farm & Ranch cover. Since then they have spent millions of dollars more to expand the house (to 8,600 sq. ft.) and the barn (which had six stalls but now has 28, with a covered riding ring). They...
...area's two dozen-plus camps and see it as a nostalgic family retreat. Tom Fatjo, the multimillionaire founder of Waste Corp. of America, fell in love with the Guadalupe River at age 5. Now he flies in by charter jet from Houston to his 200-acre ranch outside Kerrville and brings along his four kids, ages 3 to 11, to hunt, fish and swim on holidays. Fatjo watches over his herd of 60 axis deer and whitetail deer from the luxury of his truck or golf cart. "It's clearly a dude ranch, not a working ranch," he says...