The Private World of T. Boone Pickens: Get an Exclusive Look at Oil Magnate's Massive Panhandle Ranch

ROBERTS COUNTY -- By 8 a.m., T. Boone Pickens has finished his cereal on the screened-in porch at the Mesa Vista Ranch. He looks out at the parklike setting that surrounds the 23,000-square-foot main house in this remote corner of the Panhandle.For those who think of Pickens as a Bick Benedict oil giant, the scene is a revelation. “I laugh at myself in a cowboy hat,” he says. At the office and at the ranch, he wears sneakers and a country club sweater.The house is called the lodge and it sits in the middle of acres of manicured fescue grass, shaded by hundreds of trees -- cottonwoods, pear oaks, native hackberries and Pickens’ favorite, sycamores.It’s the hub of his personal fiefdom, miles and miles of Texas that he has nurtured as a pristine habitat for quail, dove, turkey, deer and antelope.  Continue reading...