By Margaret Jackson
The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 10/12/2008 09:10:53 AM MDT
George and Patty Stranahan, owners of the 245-acre Flying Dog Ranch and quintessential local figures in Aspen and Woody Creek, are selling the property, listed for $56 million. “We’re losing something so special,” a neighbor says of the couple. (Zach Ornitz Special to The Denver Post )
After 40 years of working his Woody Creek ranch, George Stranahan is hanging up the shovel to tell stories.
The 76-year-old heir to the Champ ion spark plug fortune has listed the 245-acre Flying Dog Ranch for $56 million.
“It’s damned hard work taking care of 245 acres,” said Stranahan, who also founded the Flying Dog Brewery. “My kids don’t want to live here, so I’m not doing it for any good reason. I have more than a mile of driveways to plow here. I’ve just been there and done that on the ranch. I don’t need to do it anymore.”
The Flying Dog Ranch, adjacent to the 2.3 million-acre White River National Forest, is among the last remaining undeveloped ranches in the Aspen area, said Ed Zasacky, managing broker of Aspen Sotheby’s International Realty who is listing the property.
While the ranch has been subdivided into four parcels, Zasacky said the property will be sold in its entirety.
“We want to give the eventual buyer all the options possible,” he said. “We don’t want to shoot ourselves in the foot.”
Two of the parcels have conservation easements, but allow barns to be built. The other two parcels allow homes to be built on them.
Zasacky is marketing the property internationally through the Sotheby’s website, the company’s Reside Magazine and local real estate agents.
“Agents are the biggest source of sales around here,” he said.
Even Aspen sales down
Despite the wealth in Aspen, its real estate market has not been immune to the downward spiral plaguing the rest of the state. Volume was down 23 percent in July to $124.5 million compared with the same month last year, according to Coldwell Banker broker Peter Kelley. For the year, dollar volume was down 47 percent to $841.3 million.
Transactions were down 30 percent to 66 compared with July 2007. For the year, transactions are down 32 percent to 519.
Stranahan, who had a strong interest in science from an early age, was not interested in going into the family business co-founded by his grandfather Frank Stranahan in 1903. He earned a Ph.D. in physics at Carnegie Mellon University, worked as a research associate at Purdue, then as an associate professor at Michigan State. Around the time he was 40, Stranahan had had enough.
“It was boring to be a professor,” he said.
Community’s go-to guy
Stranahan relocated to Aspen, where he founded the Aspen Center for Physics in 1962.
Stranahan and his wife, Patty, will be sorely missed around Woody Creek.
“If you had a problem of almost any sort, you could go to George and Patty, and they’d discuss it and listen,” said longtime friend Gaylord Guenin. “The ranch itself was really a huge gathering place for hundreds of people.”
Guenin said he wasn’t surprised when he read in the local paper that the Stranahans were selling the ranch.
“It’s something they’ve been talking about for a few years, but it was like reading an obituary,” Guenin said. “We’re losing something so special.”
At the monthly Woody Creek Caucuses, neighbors gather to discuss what is going on in the community.
“Almost without exception, if we had something before the caucus some of us didn’t quite comprehend, people would say, ‘Well, is George for it or against it?’ ” Guenin said. “That’s the kind of respect he’s given.”
During the 1980s, Stranahan founded the Woody Creek Tavern, and in 1994, he started Flying Dog Brewery, which relocated its brewing operations to Maryland but still is headquartered in Denver. When Stranahan moved Flying Dog to Denver about 14 years ago, he teamed up with John Hickenlooper, now Denver’s mayor, on a bottling operation. Hickenlooper then was brewing Railyard Ale.
“A certain restlessness”
Hickenlooper said Stranahan is among his favorite people to be around.
“He lives life on his own terms,” Hickenlooper said. “He’s a great storyteller, and he’s one of the people who likes a joke more than I do.”
Stranahan also is publisher of the People’s Press, a black- and-white photographer and an investor in Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey.
“It’s a sign of immaturity and a certain restlessness and adventurousness that is fundamentally immature, but I’ve gotten away with it,” he said. “I’ve never really been behind bars, but I have gone to the sheriff’s department.”
Stranahan plans to move to River Valley Ranch in Carbondale, where he’ll tell his stories to anyone who will listen.
“If you sit at a bar, somebody’s going to let you tell a story,” he said. “I’m trying to figure out what is the proper role of an elder, an older person in the community. How does the community value me and how do I become valuable to the community? Storytelling is fundamentally what it needs to be about, but you have to have good stories.”
Stranahan has a lot of good stories, primarily about his decades in Woody Creek and his longtime friendship with the late “gonzo” journalist Hunter S. Thompson.
“We talked a lot, drank a lot and dynamited a lot,” he said. “We both liked dynamite, and if you’re a rancher, you have access to dynamite.”
He recalls sitting at home one evening drinking a beer after his wife and son had gone to bed. Thompson showed up with a new firearm to show Stranahan.
“He brought his whiskey, a bag of ice and a glass,” Stranahan said. “So I switched to whiskey.”
Stranahan’s then-7-year-old son, Ben, woke up and joined the men, who were talking about guns and politics. The three of them decided it would be a good idea to hold Ben’s pet tarantula.
“We’ve read that it can be done,” he said. “Hunter and I decided this is the moment of courage. Ben’s going to be initiated into manhood.” Thompson reached into his bag and pulled out some lipstick, put it all over his face, Ben’s face and Stranahan’s face.
“Now we are ready to hold the tarantula,” Stranahan said. “We’re holding the tarantula when Patty wakes up — and two of the three of us are drunk, wearing lipstick and playing with a tarantula in her house.
“She turned around and went back to bed. There was nothing else to do.”
