Texas A&M Forest Service via Getty Images
- About 80% of Turkey Track Ranch, listed for $180 million, has been destroyed by wildfire.
- The owners said Texas's Smokehouse Creek Fire has decimated the pastures, plains, and vegetation.
- The fire has spread to nearly 1.1 million acres — an area bigger than Rhode Island.
Most of a historic Texas ranch, on the market for $180 million, was badly burned by wildfires spreading across the Texas Panhandle, the owners said Thursday.
In a statement, the owners of the Turkey Track Ranch, which contains around 80,000 acres, said an early assessment indicated that about 80% of "pastures, plains, and creek bottom vegetation" had been destroyed.
The owners said the loss of livestock, crops, wildlife, and infrastructure was "unparalleled in our history."
"We are heartbroken by this devastating fire and its tremendous associated effects and losses which continue," they said, while thanking firefighters who came to help save the ranch.
According to Icon Global, the Dallas-based brokerage running the marketing for the property's sale, the Turkey Track Ranch was one of the original ranches of the Panhandle.
It has an extensive Native American history and is known for the battles of Adobe Walls in 1864 and 1874.
Situated in northern Texas, the ranch was overrun by the Smokehouse Creek Fire, the largest of several wildfires blazing through the Panhandle.
The fire, which broke out on Monday, quickly became the "largest and most destructive" in Texas's history, the West Odessa Volunteer Fire Department said in a Facebook post on Thursday.
It's also the second most destructive wildfire in US history, after the 1825 Miramichi Fire in Maine, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
In total, it's spread to nearly 1.1 million acres — an area bigger than Rhode Island — with only about 3% of the fire contained as of Thursday, the fire department said.
Two people have been confirmed dead.
Responding to the crisis, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration on Tuesday for 60 counties affected by the "devastating" wildfires.
President Joe Biden, who was in Texas on Thursday to visit the US-Mexico border, announced that he had directed federal officials to do "everything possible" to assist communities affected.
More than 500 federal personnel are already engaging in fire-fighting efforts, he said.