A Texas businessman has proposed a land exchange with the state that, if approved, would give the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation a 14,400-acre wheat farm and cattle ranch southeast of Winifred — a first-of-its-kind exchange in state history.
The land exchange was proposed by David Killam, the CEO of Killam Companies, a family-owned Laredo, Texas-based oil, gas and real-estate business that also owns two Texas ranches that are outfitted for hunting.
Early last year, Killam purchased the 60,000-acre Dana Ranch at the base of the Big Belt Mountains, about 30 miles south of Great Falls. The listed price for the Cascade and Meagher county ranch, located between the Smith and Missouri rivers, was $45 million.
The Dana Ranch has a significant patchwork of state lands within its borders, totaling more than 14,100 acres. Most of the state land is not accessible to the public, although public hunting access has been allowed through the state’s Block Management Program.
To put the proposed land exchange together, Killam has a buy-sell agreement with the owners of the X Hanging Diamond Ranch. He is offering to buy the ranch and deed it to the DNRC in return for the state’s inholdings in his Dana Ranch. Sweetening the deal for the state is the fact that the ranch abuts another 3,600 acres of Bureau of Land Management and state lands that are now inaccessible to the public.
