Steve Rooney is living the cowboy dream.
“I have always been interested in the Western lifestyle. I like riding horses and raising cows. I like helping out with the hay. I'm a hands-on guy,'' he told the Wall Street Journal, which reported that he bought a nearly 37,000-acre ranch near White Sulfur Springs, Montana, for more than $50 million.
Rooney founded Precision Pipeline, an oil and gas pipeline company based in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He sold it to MasTec, an infrastructure company based in Coral Gables, Fla., in 2009, the newspaper said.
He purchased a cattle ranch in Montana known as Camas Creek Cattle & Sheep Company from Jock and Jamie Doggett. The Doggett family has owned this land for over a century and ranched it for five generations. The property has three homes: the 2,400 square foot Yellow House, the 2,300 square foot White House, and the 2,700 square foot Mama's House. They went public earlier this year for $58.8 million.
Rooney was represented by Ryan Flair of Hall & Hall, one of the nation's top luxury ranch brokerages, and Mike Swan and Tim Anderson of Swan Land Company handled the listing.
The ranch has the capacity to house 1,800 animals, according to the listing. Rooney told the outlet that he plans to maintain the land as a cattle ranch and that his son will be in charge of meat processing at the Wisconsin plant.
Rooney also owned agricultural land. In February, he sold a ranch called Diamond Tail Ranch in Larimer County, Colorado, for $46.9 million, BizWest reported. When he's not digging irrigation canals or riding horses, Rooney can be found at his home in Wisconsin or his home in Jupiter, Florida. He bought a waterfront mansion in the gated Admiral's Cove community for $9.9 million last year.
–– kate hinsche
