A 1,700-Acre Ranch in Southern Arizona Hits the Market for $29.95 Million

In Patagonia, Ariz., a roughly 1,700-acre ranch asking $29.95 million is Southern Arizona’s most expensive residential listing.

Known as the Rail X Ranch, there are several structures on the property including a main house, a guest casita, two stand-alone employee houses and three employee apartments, according to listing agent Gary Brasher with Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty.

The seller is Ferdinand von Galen and his mother, Countess Anita von Galen, according to Brasher. Von Galen, whose family has owned the property since 1973, said his mother and father, the late banker Count Ferdinand von Galen, bought the ranch as a holiday home for around $6 million.

His father, von Galen said, grew up in Germany reading about the wild west and first visited Southern Arizona to see a business partner in the 1960s. “When he came here he was like ‘Wow, this is exactly what I imagined,’ because it really was the wild west in those days. There were maybe six or seven ranches, and that was it.”

Patagonia is in Santa Cruz County and sits between the Patagonia and Santa Rita mountains, according to Brasher. It is around 10 miles from the Nogales International Airport and around 20 miles from the Mexico border.

According to von Galen, his father moved from Europe to the ranch full time in the early 1990s and his mother, who split her time between Europe and Arizona because of business, moved to the ranch full time in 2016. In 2020, von Galen moved there to be with them, he said. His father died last year and his mother still lives on the property with him.

The buildings are a mix of Spanish Colonial style and Arizona Territorial style, according to Brasher. The main home spans roughly 9,000 square feet and has six bedrooms, he said. Inside, there is a mix of modern and eclectic design, according to von Galen. There are high ceilings throughout with hand-painted white beams, mosaic and Saltillo tiling and black-and-white checkered floors on the lower level.

“My mother’s the one who has the magic eye,” von Galen said. Together with an art dealer, “she would go on these extended trips to Mexico and buy stuff. That’s how what you see came to be. It was all from her imagination.”

In addition to a private lake, the property has an artesian spring, a pool and trails. The property, which is also a working cattle ranch, maintains all its water and mineral rights, said Brasher.

Southern Arizona encompasses Pima, Santa Cruz and Cochise counties, according to Brasher. If von Galen’s ranch sells at or near its asking price, it will be the region’s most expensive recorded home sale, he said. The record is currently held by a home in Pima County, which sold early this year for around $8.4 million.

Write to Libertina Brandt at [email protected]