When President Dwight D. Eisenhower looked for an escape from the simmering Cold War in the 1950s, a favorite getaway was a rustic ranch four miles west of Winter Park — accommodations that were a far cry from Palm Beach, Martha’s Vineyard and other retreats that presidents frequent now.

Byers Peak Ranch in Fraser, the property where Ike made many stays as his career skyrocketed from Army colonel to Allied commander, to president of the United States, sold over the summer for a reported $11.5 million.

“It’s a very special place,” Developer Matt Gehrke said.

He and partner Darell Schmidt purchased the Grand County property from a Texas seller.

Eisenhower’s fondness for Grand County and his repeated visits to the ranch are documented in photos and exhibits at the nearby Cozens Ranch Museum on Highway 40 just north of Winter Park, and in interviews with Coloradans who took part.

Early in his Army career, Eisenhower and wife Mamie spent vacations in Denver, where her parents lived at 750 Lafayette St. near Cheesman Park. Around the time war broke out in Europe in 1939, then-Col. Eisenhower was lured by two Colorado acquaintances — Denver banker Aksel Nielsen and manufacturer Carl Norgren — to fish the Fraser River, close to where the pair had bought a ranch.

The modest spread, originally several thousand acres according to Gehrke, harbored a simple ranch house and outbuildings that had once been a youth camp. It was along the banks of Saint Louis Creek running down from the national forest. The creek stretched less than 20 feet wide at some points and wasn’t remarkably scenic by Colorado standards. But Eisenhower, who had grown up in Abilene, Kansas, was reportedly captivated by the tableau.

In 1948, after the five-star general had led the invasion of Europe and was being sought as a presidential candidate, Eisenhower made a return visit to the ranch. He then revisited in 1952 as he was about to be nominated.

Two years later, an announcement by the White House that the president would make a ten-day visit to the ranch set off preparations on an entirely different scale, Gehrke said.

Denver auto dealer Mark Murray, who died in 2012, recalled in a prior interview being hired by Nielsen and Norgren to help turn the modest creek clogged with beaver dams, into suitable fishing water.

“The Secret Service didn’t like that he was down fishing in the willows and hard to protect,” Gehrke said, pointing out two large ponds near the ranch buildings that were reportedly dug for the trip.

Accounts vary as to how many trout were stocked into the creek in advance of the president’s arrival. Estimates range from 350 to Murray’s own recollection of several thousand fish, enough that the trout were biting each other.

Eisenhower not only fished the site, but cooked ranch dinners for prominent guests.

Meanwhile, then-White House Press Secretary James Haggerty, anxious to portray the presidential trips as “working vacations,” held briefings for a press corps hungry for mundane details about the ranch. Transcripts are on display at the Cozens Ranch Museum.

Ike enjoyed painting the scenery. Murray recalled walking into the president’s cabin during the 1954 visit and seeing the president wadding up a recently completed watercolor, tossing it into the trash.

“If I’d only asked if I could keep one,” he later lamented.

Gehrke said the Eisenhowers picked one watercolor of the creek for their White House Christmas card in 1955. But by that time the president was recovering from a heart attack suffered during a Denver visit, and future trips to high altitudes were out.

In 2018 the U.S. Interior Department listed Byers Peak Ranch in the National Register of Historic Places.

Gehrke said he and Schmidt, who had developed apartment projects in Denver, discovered the property while scouting the national forest for elk last fall. They discovered the owner was looking for a buyer.

“Wow this is such a great spot,” Gehrke remembers saying to his partner, “I want to buy it.”

The 454-acre ranch entity, registered as Byers Peak Ranch West, is southwest of Fraser on Highway 73. It’s but a fraction of the original ranch that stretched east into Winter Park. But the parcel contains the original ranch buildings repeatedly visited by the president, along with the ponds and a stretch of the creek he fished.

Gehrke and Schmidt said in the near future they hope to sell four of eight pre-platted, 35-acre parcels as ranch estates. They expect those to fetch prices in the $2.5 to $3 million range. For the remainder, they intend to lease grazing land and continue some agricultural uses, while keeping the Byers Peak Ranch West name as a marketing theme for the property, Gehrke said.

“I feel like we’re at the very front end of new development of Winter Park and Fraser,” Gehrke said, noting that nearby Fraser is set to get a bypass on U.S. 40 that will protect and add character to its downtown, while Winter Park Resort is underway on a half-billion-dollar upgrade.