Large Chunks of Arizona Go Up for Sale

PHOENIX — In the 1800s, settlers braved the Wild West and moved to states like Arizona to stake claims for big pieces of dirt they could call their own.

Today, most people in Arizona settle for less than a quarter-acre plot within shouting distance of their neighbors.

With most of the land in Arizona owned by the government and Native American tribes, it’s tough for modern-day settlers to find a big piece of dirt for sale.

But through a deal with the Santa Fe Railroad, a Phoenix land company has assembled 150,000 acres of western Arizona desert and is selling 40- to 160-acre parcels to anyone wanting their own chunk of the West. A 40-acre parcel is the size of 36 football fields.

Legend Land, an investment group headed by Ben Brooks & Associates of Phoenix, recently paid the railroad $20 million for a checkerboard of land parcels between Kingman and Lake Havasu City.

“Some people really want a big piece of property to roam and call their own,” Ben Brooks said.

The transaction is the biggest Arizona land sale in recent history, Brooks said.

Although Arizona is the sixth-largest U.S. state in terms of size, it has few big landowners.

Only 17% of the state’s land is privately owned. The federal government owns 42%, Native American reservations hold 28%, and the state government claims 13%.

Brooks negotiated with the railroad for more than four years to buy the land. The Santa Fe Railroad was deeded the land more than 100 years ago to entice it to build railroad tracks across the state.

It was a common practice then for the U.S. government to give a railroad company land in the West and Northwest surrounding its tracks.

The land has remnants of stagecoach depots used when horse-drawn coaches carried people on the route west from Kansas to California.

Most of the 150,000 acres have been used for cattle grazing in the last few decades as the railroad looked for a buyer.

Legend Land is calling the development Stagecoach Trails at Santa Fe Ranch. The land, south of the Hualapai Mountains and east of Interstate 40, is interspersed with parcels owned by the Bureau of Land Management that total 150,000 acres.

Legend Land is in the process of trading some of the former Santa Fe Railroad land with BLM parcels to break up the checkerboard. The investment group also is trading land that the government agency wants to preserve.

The land is being sold for $300 to $500 an acre. In comparison, ranch locations with 40 acres are being marketed west of Phoenix near Sun Valley for about $1,000 an acre.

Mike Sawhill, president of Ben Brooks & Associates, said the former Santa Fe Railroad land is different from other big parcels on the market in Arizona because of the terrain.

At elevations ranging from 2,000 to 3,000 feet above sea level, the land is considered high desert with a cooler climate than nearby Lake Havasu City, where temperatures hit scorching highs well above 100 degrees in the summer.

Legend officials said they have sold 13 parcels out of 160-acre plots.

Brook & Associates has sold more than 250,000 acres across Arizona over the last 25 years.

Some of its projects include the 20,000-acre Alpine Ranch in Flagstaff and the 13,000-acre Pioneer Valley Ranches near Bullhead City.