The Last Line of Defense: How Greenland Ranch Keeps Denver and Colorado Springs Apart

MONUMENT — The emptiness starts at County Line Road. Drive north on I-25 past the Douglas County line and the subdivisions quit; for the next eight miles the view is grass, buttes and a scatter of red barns, and it stays that way roughly to Larkspur. None of this is an accident of geography or a lag in the market. It is the deliberate result of a deal closed on July 26, 2000, in which John Malone — the cable magnate who was then building Liberty Media and buying land at a pace that would briefly make him America’s largest private landowner — bought most of Greenland Ranch and, at the moment of purchase, gave away forever the right to develop it.

A Town, a Cattle Empire, a Bet

The land had been heading the other way. Greenland Ranch, roughly 21,000 acres at the time of the sale, is the remnant of a town and a cattle empire. Fred Salomon platted the 20-acre Greenland town site in 1875 as a railroad shipping point — by local accounts one of Douglas County’s first subdivisions — and the surrounding spread passed from early owner A.B. Daniels to John W. Higby and C.C. Hemming, who bought it in 1906 and renamed it the Greenland Land and Cattle Company. At its 1930s peak the ranch ran to some 22,000 acres and, per historical accounts, grazed as many as 1,600 cattle and 500 horses. A 1927 highway realignment that bypassed the town contributed to its decline; the Higby family sold in 1977, to a Colorado Springs investment group, for a reported $11.5 million. After a churn of 1980s ownership changes, the ranch landed with the Gaylord family’s Oklahoma Publishing Company, which had begun buying in around 1980. Through the 1990s — while Douglas County ranked among the fastest-growing counties in America — locals traded rumors that the ranch’s next act would be, as a 1995 Westword feature put it, “anything from a crowded subdivision to pristine open space.”

The subdivision was the smart bet. What tipped the outcome was a decade of preparation and one very large checkbook. Roy Romer had pushed for protecting the ranch since 1977, and as governor in the 1990s pressed the state to buy it. In 1992 Colorado voters created Great Outdoors Colorado, dedicating lottery proceeds to conservation. In 1994 Sydney Macy of The Conservation Fund drafted the I-25 Conservation Corridor Plan, a blueprint for protecting 25,000 acres of the gap. Douglas County voters supplied a dedicated open-space sales tax, and in 1997 the county bought all 96 vacant lots of the old Greenland town site. What the plan lacked was a buyer who could afford the main prize.

Malone could. The 2000 transaction split the ranch at the interstate. East of I-25, Malone acquired more than 17,700 acres, including the historic headquarters and its photogenic barns, with a conservation easement conveyed simultaneously to The Conservation Fund and Douglas County — a permanent restriction that removed most conventional development potential while preserving the land for ranching. West of I-25, the county bought the remaining 3,600 acres outright and opened them to the public as Greenland Open Space. Accounts of the price vary with what is being counted: the Gazette later described a $70 million project; the Land Report put the transaction at about $78 million, with Malone supplying roughly $55 million; GOCO’s records show a grant of about $9.2 million — the largest it had ever made. It was, by any accounting, the largest conservation deal in Colorado history at the time. The easement was updated and transferred in December 2020 to the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust, a land trust founded by ranchers, which now monitors and enforces it.

The Steward

Malone’s motives were plainer than billionaire land deals usually allow. “Here in the Denver area I bought basically a large ranch that separates Denver from Colorado Springs,” he told Forbes in 2011. “It’s really the only buffer between the two metros.” A longtime Douglas County resident, he described the purchase as insurance against watching the drive south dissolve into strip malls, and his ownership as temporary: “I own it, sort of, for my lifetime. But I’m really just a steward.” Malone became the country’s largest private landowner in 2011 and held the title for about a decade; the 2026 Land Report 100 now ranks him third, at some 2.2 million acres, behind Stan Kroenke and the Emmerson timber family.

Conservation did not freeze the landscape; that was never the design. The east side remains a working cattle ranch under Malone’s Silver Spur Ranches, whose Kiowa Division breeds Angus, Red Angus and Charolais seedstock across Elbert, El Paso and Douglas counties. Even the county’s public acres are still grazed — a rancher runs stocker yearlings on a grass lease, according to the Land Report. The Conservation Fund, which calls Greenland the oldest operating cattle ranch on the Front Range, has kept assembling the mosaic around it: more than 35,000 protected acres now span 12 miles of the interstate, well past the 1994 plan’s goal.

The Dividend

The deal’s newest dividend opened in December. CDOT’s I-25 Greenland wildlife overpass — 200 feet wide, 209 feet long, spanning six lanes the state says carry more than 100,000 vehicles a day — is the largest structure of its kind in North America. It cost $15 million, filled a 3.7-mile gap in an 18-mile system of underpasses and fencing between Monument and Castle Rock, and connects about 39,000 acres of habitat for the elk and pronghorn that winter on the Palmer Divide. The crossing system as a whole is expected to cut wildlife-vehicle crashes by 90 percent. The overpass lands where it does because a quarter-century of conservation guaranteed there would be habitat worth connecting on both sides — no one builds a wildlife bridge between two subdivisions.

For Tri-Lakes residents the public share of the bargain sits ten minutes up the road. Greenland Open Space offers about 11 miles of trail for hikers, mountain bikers and riders, including a five-mile leg of the Colorado Front Range Trail from Greenland to Palmer Lake along the old Territorial Road, plus an enclosed off-leash dog area. Trailheads sit at 1532 East Noe Road and 751 W. Palmer Divide Avenue, both in Larkspur. One caution for photographers: the famous red barns and ranch headquarters east of the interstate are private property under the easement, to be admired from public roads and trails.

Across the Road

Which brings the story back to County Line Road, and to the limit of what the 2000 deal bought. A conservation easement can prevent development on 17,700 acres forever. It cannot control what happens across the road, and the road is the county line. The Buc-ee’s saga that consumed Palmer Lake — a proposed 74,000-square-foot travel center with about 120 fueling positions at Monument Hill, a two-mile flagpole annexation, a recall, a lawsuit, a resigned mayor and a 765-375 vote requiring voter approval of future annexations — did not end when the annexation application was withdrawn on February 4. Buc-ee’s EPCO, LLC bought the land and its water rights in April and turned to El Paso County, asking the planning director to classify the travel center as a “convenience store” under the site’s existing C-1 zoning — a route that would have required no public hearing. On July 1 the director, Meggan Herington, declined to make that call; the next day Buc-ee’s appealed, sending the question to the Board of County Commissioners as county file APP261. No hearing date has been set.

However that appeal lands, the two stories now frame each other from opposite sides of one road. To the north, the most consequential land-use decision in the corridor’s history was made once, a generation ago, and holds without a single public hearing because nothing about it can change. To the south, the arguing never stops. Greenland Ranch demonstrates both the power and the boundary of a conservation easement — it saved the gap, but the gap’s front line has simply moved to El Paso County, and this time there is no billionaire steward standing on it.

Sources & further reading

The Independent’s reporting draws on the public record. Every source used for this article is listed below.

The Independent’s own coverage

• Buc-ee’s Tries the Back Door
• Eighty-Plus Objections to Buc-ee’s, Filed ‘for Reference Only’
• Is a Buc-ee’s a ‘Convenience Store’? The County Says It Cannot Tell
• Buc-ee’s Appeals — and the Question Lands with the Commissioners
• Call It a Truck Stop: Opposition Group Publishes Its Own Answer to the Buc-ee’s Question
• A Town Without Guardrails (Palmer Lake governance)
• Choose Wisely (the commissioners’ record)

The 2000 deal and the easement

• Great Outdoors Colorado — Greenland Ranch funded-project page
• GOCO — “17,700+ acre Greenland Ranch conservation easement transferred to the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust” (July 2020)
• Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust — transfer announcement (PDF, July 2020)
• The Conservation Fund — I-25 Conservation Corridor Project
• Kaplan Kirsch LLP — Greenland Ranch Conservation Easement
• Colorado Community Media — “Greenland Ranch open-space deal expected to close today” (July 26, 2000)
• The Gazette — “Conservation easements preserve unique Colorado heritage along I-25 north of Monument” (July 15, 2018)

The land’s history

• Westword — “Our Town” (Aug. 16, 1995)
• The Tribune — “The forgotten town of Greenland” (March 2020)
• Larkspur Historical Society — Greenland
• Palmer Divide Historical Society — Palmer Divide ranches and homesteads

John Malone and Silver Spur

• Forbes — “John Malone, Largest Private Landowner in the U.S., Speaks” (March 10, 2011)
• Fortune — “Meet the largest landowner in America” (Sept. 27, 2012)
• The Land Report — “John Malone Tells the Story of His 2.2 Million Acres” (Born to Be Wired excerpt)
• Brunswick Review — “John Malone, Land Conservationist” (2023)
• The Land Report — Land Report 100 (2026 ranking)
• Silver Spur Ranches — operations and the Kiowa Division

The wildlife overpass

• Colorado Governor’s Office — completion announcement (December 2025)
• CDOT — I-25 Greenland Wildlife Overpass project page
• Douglas County — I-25 Wildlife Crossing Network
• CPR News — “Largest wildlife overpass in North America now ready for use” (Dec. 17, 2025)

Buc-ee’s and the county line

• The Land Report — “The Battle to Protect Greenland Ranch” (2025)
• The Colorado Sun — “Conservationists concerned over Palmer Lake’s proposed Buc-ee’s” (May 28, 2025)
• The Colorado Sun — “Buc-ee’s withdraws application to build second Colorado location” (Feb. 4, 2026)
• KRDO — “‘Buc-ee’s EPCO LLC’ buys land, water rights in El Paso County” (April 22, 2026)
• CPR News — “Buc-ee’s hits a hurdle with the El Paso County planning department” (July 2, 2026)
• Our Community News — “Buc-ee’s seeks to avoid public hearings” (July 2026)
• KKTV — “Buc-ee’s files appeal regarding El Paso County land use decision” (July 7, 2026)
• El Paso County — ADM264 determination-of-use project record
• El Paso County — APP261 appeal record
• El Paso County Planning & Community Development — Buc-ee’s update page

Visiting

• Douglas County — Greenland Open Space, Trail and Dog Park