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In 1742, nearly two decades before the American Revolution, William Byrd II, one of the colonies' largest landowners (and slave owners), had amassed a tract in North Carolina that spanned more than 26,000 acres. He named it "Land of Eden" in what amounted to a marketing ploy to induce Europeans to cross the Atlantic and settle on his property. It didn't work, and by 1755 Byrd's spendthrift son was forced to sell the land to pay off gambling debts. [read more]

Record-breaking deals in rural real estate

For a number of reasons, the sale of the fabled W.T. Waggoner Ranch, one of the largest contiguous ranches in the U.S., was known as the deal that couldn't get done.

First, there were the courts. Heirs to the orginial rough-and-tumble cowboys founders Don Waggoner and W.T. Waggoner had sparred for years over the property. Then there was the price tag. To keep the property off the auction block, Bernie Uechtritz from Icon Global Properties and Sam Middleton of Chas Middleton and Associates put the number at a cool $725 million. For this land was more than just farmland. It was a land imbued with a legendary history, filled with the Lone Star's tradition and folklore, prosperity and ruin. Word had it W.T. Waggoner had discovered oil there while looking for water. He had been displeased with what he had found - the oil-slick ground water was unsuitable for his cattle. [read more]

Sheer bluffs, aspen groves, Chihuahuan Desert grasslands - these 5,086 acres offer the rare opportunity to own a spectacular end-of-the-road getaway.

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Straddling the border of Georgia and Florida are 300,000 acres of pristine pines and rolling, grassy hills. Hunting parties traverse the grounds, accompanied by mule-drawn, 100-year-old wagons, trained dogs, and staff on horseback in search of wild bobwhite quail. Plantation homes sit at the end of long driveways, invisible to passersby.

The region is called the Red Hills, an area designated one of America's "Last Great Places" by the Nature Conservancy. Plantation owners want to keep the wide-open spaces undeveloped, partly to preserve quail habitats for hunting, but largely to act as stewards of the land and homes that have been in their families for generations.

"We want to make the world safe for bobwhite quail," says Charles Chapin III, a retired banker who lives in Oldwick, N.J., and spends four months a year on the quail-hunting plantation in Thomasville, Ga., developed by his grandfather at the turn of the century. [read more]