Yellowstone co-creator and writer Taylor Sheridan doesn’t just write about life on the ranch; he lives it in real life, too. The television mogul is part of a group of investors who bought the famed 6666 Ranch in Texas for a reported figure that was just under $200 million.
The 6666 Ranch — better-known as the Four Sixes Ranch — in Guthrie, Texas, dates back to 1870, according to a property listing. Samuel Burk Burnett was one of the most influential and wealthiest cattlemen in Texas history, and he put the 6666 Ranch together by purchasing several smaller ranches and joining them together, topped off by building what was, at the time, termed “the finest ranch house in Texas” in Guthrie in 1917.
Sheridan grew up in Texas “in the shadow of the Four Sixes,” he tells the Hollywood Reporter.
“To just get one of their horses was a status symbol, because they’re so well trained. This was the ranch I based [Yellowstone’s] scope and operation on, because it didn’t exist in Montana. Most ranches there had already been carved up. They’d already lost it.”
Sheridan convinced the ranch’s former owner, 81-year-old Anne Marion, to let him use the ranch on Yellowstone in 2019, but he was caught unaware when he received a call from the estate after she subsequently died, asking if he wanted to purchase the property.
“I said, ‘How much?’ They said, ‘It’s $350 million.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m about 330 short. But please, you thought enough to call me, will you give me two weeks?’” he recalls.
Sheridan ended up heading up a team of investors who paid a reported $192 million for the property in 2022. He’d had a plan in mind to retire after the success of Yellowstone, but in order to preserve the Four Sixes, he turned around to Paramount Network and signed a massive new deal, reportedly worth $200 million, that entailed him creating what various entertainment publications have dubbed the “Taylor Sheridan Universe.”
That includes Yellowstone prequels 1883 and 1923, as well as 1944, Lawmen: Bass Reeves and another Yellowstone show set at the Four Sixes. Matthew McConaughey is also reportedly in talks to star in a Yellowstone
Sheridan is also overseeing the upcoming Nicole Kidman-Morgan Freeman spy thriller Special Ops: Lioness, the prison drama Mayor of Kingstown, the Sylvester Stallone mob comedy-drama Tulsa King, the upcoming Billy Bob Thornton drama Land Man and more for Paramount Network. Sheridan estimates that he is responsible for producing a billion dollars’ worth of television per year under the terms of that deal.
“I do the shows for the ranch,” Sheridan tells the Hollywood Reporter.
Scroll through the photos below to see inside Taylor Sheridan’s stunning Texas ranch, and keep scrolling to pictures of ranches belonging to Yellowstone‘s Kevin Costner, Cole Hauser and more.
PICS: See Inside Taylor Sheridan’s Historic 6666 Ranch in Texas
