MONTANA ACREAGE NEAR HELENA, GORGEOUS HORSE PROPERTY Half mile of Spokane Creek, pastures, fenced, hayground Start Price - Current Price - Time Left - Bid Count 0 Buy It Now Price - Reserve Price - Start Time Thursday, April 03, 2008 End Time Wednesday, July 02, 2008 Location Helena, Montana See more about 'MONTANA ACREAGE NEAR HELENA, GORGEOUS HORSE PROPERTY' Description If you have been looking for a place in the Big Sky Paradise of Montana to build a nice home, have some horses and live the Montana lifestyle, here is the place for you. 19 Lazy H M road, East Helena/Winston, Montana.  Located about half way between Yellowstone and Glacier Parks, near Helena on Highway 287 toward Townsend, this is one of the finest properties available with all the amenities you want.  A live, year around creek runs about a half mile through the middle of the property,  access to 287 is only about a quarter mile from the current gate, power and utilities at the edge of the property, water at only 50 or 60 feet for domestic wells, productive hay fields, several excellent building sites and surrounded by the beautiful mountains of Montana.  The Elkhorns, just to the south, provide the water for the creek and views to sooth the soul any day of the year.  Another little spring fed brook comes in from across the highway and adds to the water in the creek and is ice cold, even in the summer.  In the ten years I’ve owned this property, the creek has never gone dry.  There is a pond for fishing and irrigating that the kids love to boat on and swim in, too.    I bought this property about ten years ago when it was first subdivided from the historic Myles ranch.  It is just under 22 acres, located along the highway between East Helena and Townsend, Montana.  It is a gorgeous piece of property, it was nice when I bought it and I have done a lot of work to the ground and the fields to make it a better one.  I have smoothed and rolled the fields, planted grass, done weed control, fenced and cross fenced it and put up the hay.  For a while I had my girlfriend’s horses on it and for one or two summers I had some cows on it and soon will have five Corriente cows and calves on it for the summer or until it sells.  I built a little storage shed and a little fenced area behind it but mostly what I have done is enjoyed the creek and the field work.  Now, however, I have decided to pretty much retire and move back to my ranch in eastern Montana for a summer home and buy a winter home in Texas.  Like everyone, age is catching up to me and it has come time to sell this property to finance the other plans.    While Bozeman and Kalispell get most of the press about Montana, Helena is, in my estimation, the best of all worlds.  Prices here are still realistic, this property in the Bozeman area would be three to four times what I am asking here if you could find an undeveloped acreage with live water on it which you probably couldn’t. While Kalispell doesn’t have a decent highway in any direction, Helena is on I-15, the main corridor to the north and south and on highway 12/287 east and west.  This little ranch; the 19 Lazy HM—which is the address—is only 50 miles from I-90 to the southeast or 60 miles from it going west.  Helena is situated in the best location in the state for doing business; it is the state capital and only 85 miles from Great Falls on I-15, 65 miles from Butte on I-15 south, 100 miles northwest of Bozeman and 115 miles east of Missoula.  There is every advantage in Helena that any of the other cities have, whether it is recreation, a bustling economy or transportation, but Helena has them all and it is all close by.  There is not the congestion and craziness of Bozeman, prices here are a third or fourth of what they would be in Bozeman or Kalispell and it is much more easy going here than in either of those towns.  Here, the air is still clean, the water is still pure and you don’t have to have a million dollar motor home to pull your horse trailer to someplace where you can ride.  There are three magnificent lakes nearby, Canyon Ferry, Holter and Hauser just a few miles away.  They are all on the mighty Missouri River with Canyon Ferry being only 5 or 6 miles away over the top of the mountain or about 15 around the road to the dam, less to the fishing accesses all along the edge of the lake.  Holter and Hauser are further north, toward Great Falls and beyond that the best blue ribbon trout river in the west, the Missouri.  Fishing is nothing short of fantastic in this area, lake, stream and river fishing in the summer and ice fishing on Canyon Ferry in the winter.  In summer there are boats on the lakes and Canyon Ferry is renowned as a sailing boat lake.  In the winter, skiing at Great Divide and Showdown are just an hour or so away with Big Sky only about an hour and a half or two hours away.  Snowmobilers come here from all over the country to West Yellowstone and Lincoln to snowmobile, sled dog racers come to Helena to race and Helena is virtually the Horse mecca of the west, with several roping arenas and training stables operating in the area.  There is a lot of team roping, cutting horse and reined cowhorse competition and nearly every place has a horse trailer parked in the year and a corral or pasture with horses in it.  Rodeo, barrel racing, team penning, endurance riding, trail riding, whatever you can think of to do with horses is in abundance here.  It is only about 80 miles to Bozeman, less than 220 to Billings and about 110 to Great Falls, where most of the big horse events in the eastern part of the state take place.   You can check out Helena by just searching on Google.  It is a wonderful town, old Victorian houses, historic Last Chance Gulch is the center of downtown and  the outskirts have shopping for everything the average Montanan needs.  There are several good western wear stores and lots of quality women's wear for work. The economy is robust and many new residents and people have moved in in recent years.  It is a town of means, but not particularly ostentatious like some places have become.  There is no Yellowstone club, no five million dollar trophy homes and no movie stars with entourages that I have seen.  There are fine schools, a college, a tech school and, of course, it is the state capital and head of the federal government for the northwest so there are a lot of very stable jobs.  There is a lot of entertainment for a town this size ranging from a good symphony to bluegrass and country music concerts.  It is the best of all worlds for Montana.  City, country, urban, rural, weather, economy, the air is clean and crime is virtually unknown.  There is an excellent airport, roads are good and traffic mostly non-existent.    19 Lazy HM is a horseman’s dream.  The fields are smooth and sandy with very few rocks in the pastures, Spokane creek with pure mountain water runs through the property from end to end and there are several locations perfect for building a nice arena and barn.  While the covenants would restrict running a commercial operation on this property, many people breed and raise pleasure horses here.  Speaking of covenants, the covenants are very realistic, all houses must be stick built, 1000 sq ft minimum, no commercial activity, no noxious operations like a hog farm, no junk vehicles, etc.  The area is full of very nice but not ostentatious houses, the subdivision is only ten years old so all houses are pretty new.  Most of the property owners have horses or a few cows, many have a little tractor and some small haying equipment and put up there own hay so their animals have a consistent diet year around.  There are two or three people in the area who custom hay for other people and there is a small amount of rental pasture available locally, too.      If you are a horseman who loves to ride and wants to actually get out and spend the day on your horse or who loves to get up early and take a ride up on the mountain, this is the place to do it.  Just last year, an elderly couple donated 6,000+++ acres of mountain property to the State of Montana for the enjoyment of the people of the state, to be kept in its wilderness and undeveloped state for riding, hunting, backpacking, etc.  That property sets less than 1000 feet from this ranch.  Just ride out the gate, up to the top of the hill and there you are; ten sections of Montana wilderness to ride on anytime you want.  No fee, no signing in, nothing, just go ride.  It is also open to snowmobiling, skiing, hiking, etc. and may or may not be open to hunting.  I’m not a hunter so I don’t know.  The animals on this place, the deer, the elk who come to drink in the creek as the sun goes down, the rabbits, a covey of quail that lives down by the creek, all have safe haven as I don’t kill anything but rattlesnakes and I have only ever seen one of them here.    Some details about this property.  It sets on what is called the Spokane Creek Divide about half way between Helena and Townsend, Montana.  It is at an elevation of about 4500 feet.  Spokane Creek, which runs the length of the property, runs from the Elkhorn Mountains to the south and west down through the valley and on to the Missouri river below Canyon Ferry Dam.  A mile or less away, Beaver Creek runs down the other side of the divide, down to the Missouri above the Dam.  This property sets in a small valley between the Elkhorns and McMaster Mountain.   The main highway, 287, runs along the southwest side of the property with Lazy HM road along the southeast side.  The highway was rebuilt several years ago and at that time, we replaced the old fence with new barbed wire fencing on wooden posts.  The rest of the property was fenced with all wooden posts and barbed wire shortly after I bought it in the fall of 1998.  I have built one cross fence, which separates the alfalfa field from the pastures and other fields.  I had planned to put in two more cross fences but never did.  The way I have them laid out and the way I fenced the alfalfa field would make four pastures, each one with part of Spokane creek running through it.  On the south east side of the creek the Alfalfa field is fenced out from the main gate up to the south side of the creek.  On the other side of the gate is a small hay field I call the calf pasture, which my girlfriend used for practicing her barrel racing when she had her horses there.  It could easily be fenced off and would have live water and be a fine level area for horses.  In the big pasture—about 12 acres of level ground-- there are two ditches for irrigation.  The main ditch comes off the creek at the upper end and runs along the fence all the way to the northwest end of the property.  It is cement lined and has dams for flooding the main field.  The second ditch comes off the creek about half way down in the pasture and parallels the cement ditch for flooding the lower part of the pasture.  This ditch water, along with runoff, is used to fill the pond in the spring for summer irrigation water.  The pond is about 350 feet long 75 feet wide and 15 to 25 feet deep.  It is at the northwest end of the property and is shared with a neighbor for irrigation water.  He has never used it but does have some water right.  The ditches out of the creek have 115 gallons a minute of water right and the pond has 150 gallons a minute of water right.  I have never actually used the ditches for irrigation and have never transferred the right but it is available and will transfer with the property.  There is usually enough rain to grow all the hay I want and since I live in town it is a bother to go out and turn the irrigation water on and off and make sure I am not using too much so I have not irrigated.  You can see in the pictures what kind of hay this place grows without irrigation; I don’t know what it would do with irrigation.  My purpose was never to grow hay anyway.  I just have had this as a getaway from town and work and since I am an old farm boy I have enjoyed putting up the hay.  Most of it I have given to my horse friends but I did sell several hundred dollars worth last year.  The upper fields are all grass hay, there was some Alfalfa in the pastures but I sprayed for broadleaf weeds and that kills the Alfalfa so now it is a combination of grasses.  It is mostly wheat grasses with some brome and timothy, which is what they recommended.  The calf pasture has some orchard grass in it which the upper pastures don’t have.  It is excellent horse hay.  The most hay I ever put up was in 2005, after several years of planting, spraying, rolling, dragging, etc., I had a great hay crop.  I put up about 800 small square bales of grass and alfalfa hay. For being at 4500 ft elevation and only cutting it once, 32 tons of hay is an excellent crop for this area.  At that time I had a New Holland 282 baler, which made 16 x 18 bales.  They were so heavy I just couldn’t lift them so I sold that baler and got a little John Deere that makes lighter 14 x 18 bales.  I decided to have someone else put up the hay on shares the last two summers but I still have a little Ford NAA tractor, mower and rake for doing some of it myself.  Depending on the deal we can make, the equipment would go with the property.  I also have a roller, a disk, etc., everything you would need to do the work on this little ranch.    The main pasture is about 9 or 10 acres, the lower pasture is about 3 acres, the alfalfa field is about 3 acres, the calf pasture about 2 and there are about 2 acres of willows, creek, etc.  There is one little area of about half an acre near the turnoff from the highway that has never been used since the construction of the new road.  You can take a look at how the property lays by following this link to google earth.  You can see how the highway runs beside the southwest side, the gravel around the north side to the gate, the pond and all the pastures.  The map they provide with google earth is wrong, the road that makes the bend along the north east side is Lazy H M road, the road they show as Lazy H M actually does not exist.  One nice thing about this property is that it lays between two roads so it only shares one common fence with a neighboring property.   It is no really a triangle but because of the way the road bends it is narrower at the southeast end than it is at the northwest end.  As a consequence, the property seems much bigger than it is.  If you look at the google image, what I call the big pasture is to the left, the alfalfa field is to the right, the creek runs along the edge of the alfalfa field and past the gate to the top of the property, which is about 50 feet lower than the upper end.  What we call the calf pasture is from the gate to the upper end of the picture.  You can see the pond at the upper end on the left.  It is shared with the neighbors.  We have a little boat in there and my friend’s daughters spent a lot of time fooling around in it when they were younger. This time of year it is full and overflowing out the spillway.    http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=19+Lazy+H+M+Rd,+Winston,+Mt+59647&sll=40.890207,-74.468079&sspn=0.006489,0.014462&ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=46.540038,-111.731343&spn=0.001476,0.003616&z=18&iwloc=addrhttp://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=19+Lazy+H+M+Rd,+Winston,+Mt+59647&sll=40.890207,-74.468079&sspn=0.006489,0.014462&ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=46.540038,-111.731343&spn=0.001476,0.003616&z=18&iwloc=addr     I grew up on a ranch and had wanted a little place like this for years.  I think some of the best days I have ever had in my life have been putting up the hay on this place.  With the Elkhorn Mountains off to the south and west, McMaster mountain rising a few hundred feet to the east, the birds and wildlife all around, cutting hay and raking it has to be as close to having fun as a man can get and still be working.  There is not so much hay that it gets to be drudgery to do it, but there is enough to be worth the doing.  Some of those little two or three acre places I see people haying don’t have room enough to turn the tractor around on, this is big enough you can see the stack when you are done and know it was worthwhile doing.  I had a bale wagon and made two stacks every year, one for the grass hay and one for the alfalfa.  I should have taken more pictures but didn’t but one year there was a stack of small square bales at least 100 feet long.  There will be a picture of that stack on the web site when I get it up and running.    As far as wildlife, the Elk, or Wapati, are right up on the mountain.  You can hear them bugling in the fall of the year and you can see them most of the time in the winter.  I came back from Bozeman one night and stopped to close the gate.  As I came down the road I could see four huge bull Elk coming out of the gate, they had been down to get a drink from the creek and were going up to bed down for the night.  There are deer on the place nearly every day plus the usual bunny rabbits and birds.  There are bluebird boxes on the fences here and last year every one of them had bluebirds in the summer.  There is a lot of other wildlife around, lots of deer and elk, rabbits and quail, a coyote or two and one year I had a den of fox near the highway.    The property can be subdivided one time, only into two parcels, neither of which can be less than ten acres.  The new owner must join the homeowner’s association.  There are no restrictions that I know of on how soon you have to build.  I have owned this for ten years and haven’t built anything but a little storage shed for my tools.  This is the last undeveloped 20+ acres parcel with creek frontage in this subdivision and one of the few anywhere in the area. There is only one other parcel this size, there are two or three 10 acre parcels that are still not built on and they are up on the mountain with no creek frontage.  While it is obviously up to the new owner what they do with the property I would hope they don’t subdivide it.  It lays so perfectly as it is for a showcase property for horses that it would be a shame to divide it.  I do not know, and no real estate agent I have talked to knows of a better property for sale in this area.  Yes, I have it priced higher than they want me to price it but I think it is worth what I am asking.  Where else are you going to find 22 acres with everything this property has?  From a school bus at the front door to 6000 acres to ride out the back door, there is no other place that I have seen in Montana where you could build your dream home and barns and arena and have what you have here.  The view of the Elkhorns at the first snow in the fall is worth whatever you pay for this property.  Nice neighbors, nice houses and properties around you and a good road to the Queen City of the Rockies.  What more could anybody ask?    As far as the price, according to a real estate person I talked to from Bozeman, it is less than half of what this would bring in Bozeman – and according to her, there is no property like this left in Bozeman.  Everything on water has already been built on or is not for sale and won’t be at any time in the foreseeable future.  Most of the properties that have any kind of water on them are treed properties that have either already been logged, don’t have saleable timber on them or have covenants against logging.  A piece of quality hay ground with live water is impossible to find in a setting like this.  Most hay ground is low ground with problems with septic systems or flat as a pancake and full of bugs from the hayfields nearby.  This is a sloping property with several perfect spots to build a house and barn.     Why, you ask, would I sell this?  Well, I am a 65++ year old bachelor.  I can’t afford and don’t really want the kind of house this property demands.  Anything I could afford to build would devalue the property.  I no longer have any horses or cows and while the winters here are beautiful with little snow and not terribly cold or long, I want to go to Texas in the winter and spend some time down there widow shopping and playing music.  I have two other places here; a house in town and a ranch in eastern Montana plus some other small properties.  I am in the auction business and am busy with that.  I just sold a cabin in the mountains and I can’t keep up with everything I have going on.  I didn’t put up the hay the last two years because I was so busy with business and everything else and as much as I love this place, the reality is that I am spending less time there than I want to and the time has come to pass it on to somebody who will build on it and bring it up to its potential.  I will take the money and build up a smaller place where I can spend the summer and either buy a motor home or a little place in the south for the winter.  A lot of my friends go south for the winter and I’d like to do that, too.  If I end up financing this for somebody the interest will go a long way toward my retirement and if I cash it out and invest the money I’ll have income from that.  Working on a plan, here.       If you are thinking of that place in Montana that you have always wanted don’t miss this one.  This will sell.  Even with the slow economy in other parts of the country, the economy is booming in Montana.  Land prices here have doubled for properties like this in the last few years and will continue to go up. This probably went up easily 10% in the last year, the year before that, when the McMasters donated their mountain property to the state, it went up an easy 20%.  Across the road from this property are two 10 acre parcels with beautiful houses that are for sale.  Century 21 has them listed, maybe what you should do is buy one of those to live in and this for your horses or as an investment.  One house, which is on ten + acres, has a nice horse barn and a very nice 5 or 6 acre hayfield.  I have never been in the house but it is a big house and situated so it looks right down on this land. What a magnificent property that would make.  You would have almost 35 acres of magnificent Montana horse property for far under a million.  And it will do nothing but go up. Just think, you could be living in the Big Sky Paradise of Montana by the time the grass turns green in a month or two. Possession of this property is the day we close, either of the other houses would be very short time to occupancy.  Days or weeks at the most.   Many of the people who live in this area summer here and then go south for the winter.  The weather is perfect here in the summer, days in the 80’s most of the time, virtually no bugs except for very few mosquitoes down by the creek, nights are always so cool you need a blanket to sleep, the big sky and the sun make for magnificent days and this far north the days in the summer are light to 10 or 11 at night and light again by 4 am.        Here is the business part of the deal.  I am offering the place for sale for the price stated in the listing, $565,000.  I will listen to every offer and if there is one I can live with we will make a deal.  I am hoping to sell this place this summer but I don’t have to.  I am needing to move forward with some plans this summer and fall and I will consider carrying a ten or fifteen year contract on it with a substantial down payment.  Basically I will take anything over $165,000 for a down payment and will carry the contract on the balance for 15 years at around 6.5 to 7% depending on the down payment and some other details.  All paperwork will be handled by my lawyer and Helena Abstract and Title Co.  I hold clear title to the property and will give possession as soon as payment is made in full or we have a viable contract for deed.  I do reserve the right to have an auction on the property to sell some machinery within 45 days of the closing or to have access for that amount of time to move what I need to move to have an auction somewhere else.  I have some extra machinery and some building material stored there but I could have it moved in a week or two.  I’m also hoping to get a little work done in the next few weeks but I have several auctions going on and don’t know how much time I will have to work on the place.      At the full price I am asking I will leave a Ford 800 tractor with a loader, a mower and baler with the property.  I’ll also leave a few other things like a fertilizer spreader and things you would need to do the spring work on the pastures.  The pastures are greening up now even though it has been a fairly cold spring so far.  Come and take a look    My email is stanhowemt@aol.com, my cell phone is 406-949-3448.  I will be on the road from April 10th to April 15th, if you want to see the property we can make arrangements for that before or after those dates.     I will have some additional pictures posted on my web site as soon as I can get it working again.  I have it hosted with godaddy, they managed to completely destroy my website and all the pictures that were on it a few weeks ago and I am having a terrible time getting it up and running, I will probably have to change hosts.  I will post the website address as soon as I get it working.                                        Place a Bid!

More lots	See also lots
La Jara Ranch, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA Casino, Bar, Restaurant, Business - Fort Rockvale, MT YELLOW JACKET PATENTED GOLD MINE IN ARIZONA! 2 MINES!!! TN Poultry Farm-TurnKey 77 Acres 8 Houses in Mountains Superb property of 90 hectares in New Zealand	103.83 ACRES FACING ARENAL VOLCANO COSTA RICA -NEW YORK TN Poultry Farm-TurnKey 77 Acres 8 Houses in Mountains Milwaukee office, house, condominium, retail, warehouse