A historic northern Weld County ranch will be sold at auction in May by the Eaton office of the Westchester Group.

The auction of the Prange Ranch will be May 12 at the Events Center in Greeley’s Island Grove Regional Park. The ranch’s more-than-90-year-old brand will also be auctioned, with proceeds going to the Bill Perusek Memorial, which awards scholarships to graduating high school seniors annually.

Scott Shuman of the Eaton office said that while information is just now getting out on the auction, he’s already had calls from interested buyers in five or six states. Those have come, he said, from both ranchers and potential investors.

“I think by the time the auction nears, we’ll have a pretty good crowd,” Shuman said.

The ranch sits on the east side of U.S. 85, northeast of Nunn. It’s about 30 miles north of Greeley and 20 miles south of Cheyenne. The working ranch covers almost 10,000 acres and includes 300 additional animal grazing units as one of the original members of the Crow Valley Grazing Association, which has 196,000 acres that border the ranch.

Shuman said the ranch has been passed down to members of the same family since 1917 and has continued to be a working ranch. It is being sold by two grandchildren of Henry and Sarah Prange, one who lives in San Antonio and the other in Seattle.

Henry and Sarah Prange raised four children on the ranch. All of them graduated from Carr High School. He was from Nebraska, she from Michigan, and they had met and married in Washington in 1914 before relocating to northern Weld County in 1917, where they co-partnered with Henry’s brother-in-law. They became co-owners of six or seven sections of land. Over time, Henry bought out his brother-in-law and added to the ranch.

The auction will include the main residence, a 1,280-square-foot home with a fully finished basement and several modernizations. It also has a ranch manager’s house, and a mobile/modular built in 1993. Outbuildings include a bunkhouse, dairy barn, and shed/shop building along with several other sheds, a granary, brooder house and steel pipe corrals.

The Perusek Memorial was established shortly after Perusek succumbed to cancer in 2002. He was a Colorado brand inspector for 30 years and was in charge of the Weld office prior to his passing. More than $25,000 in scholarships have been awarded in his name.