Eccentric Billionaire Constructs Elaborate Western Town Just in Case His Friends Ever Want to Visit It
David and Charles Koch are billionaire brothers whose financial backing of various Conservative (in particular, Tea Party) causes is so infamous it earned them a (parody) appearance in Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis' film The Campaign.
Their little brother William "Wild Bill" Koch is more famous for just really, really, really loving the Old West.
The Denver Post reports that Bill Koch is well on his way to completing construction on Colorado's newest oldest town: a 50-building grown man's imaginarium, boasting a saloon, a church, a firehouse, a train station, and even a jail for those who defy him.
The town sits on a 420-acre meadow on Koch's Bear Ranch property, and was obviously designed by someone high.
The un-settlement, the Post explains, will exist "simply for Koch's amusement."
"Koch's project manager has told county officials that the enclave in the middle of the 6,400-acre Bear Ranch won't ever be open to the public."
Kochtopia reportedly features lots of brass and mahogany and other materials you can't find at IKEA. It is protected by a locked gate, manned by guards, and possibly Cerberus.
Ramon Reed, the chairman of the Gunnison County Planning Commission, described the town's full-scale buildings as "the kind of stuff I guess you would expect a billionare to construct," a polite way of identifying a project as "totally insane and improbable."
Koch will also construct a nearly 22,000-square foot residence on a hill above the town, where he will live as God.
The Post reports he made headlines last year for paying $2.3 million at auction for a photograph of Billy the Kid, an outlaw who likely would have robbed and killed "Wild Bill" if he had been the billionaire's contemporary rather than his fetish object.
The paper adds that Koch already owned "Jesse James' gun, Wyatt Earp's vest, Sitting Bull's rifle and a flag that belonged to Gen. George Custer," probably because he is too poor to buy things that aren't secondhand.
Koch has said that his wife once told him he should go on the television show Hoarders.
He recently bought her the moon to silence her.
[Denver Post via Newser // Image of gallows in Tombstone, Arizona via Shutterstock]