In 1981, Carole King bought a 128-acre Idaho ranch and spent 20 years restoring it; after adding a recording studio and two pools, the 35-year residence was later sold for $3.999 million

On the cover of Tapestry, Carole King sits in a window seat with a cat, with sunlight filtering through Indian-cloth curtains. The album cover, released in 1971, represented a simple, cosy home life, much like King’s music. But her own version of home turned out to be a good deal bigger, and a long way from any neighbour.Carole King bought the ranch in Stanley, Idaho, in 1981 and worked on it for decades. After spending 35 years at the residence, the Robinson Bar Ranch was sold for $3.99 million.

Somewhere wilder

Pic credit: Hall & Hall

Carole King was born in Brooklyn and raised there. She wrote her early songs in Manhattan before moving to California. While living in Los Angeles, she began looking for somewhere ‘a little wilder’. She explored several Western states before finding something that connected with her in central Idaho. That place was Robinson Bar Ranch, a 128-acre property surrounded by forest near Stanley, Idaho.For her, even the flat ground below the mountains felt restorative, so she purchased the property. The ranch sits where Warm Springs Creek meets the Salmon River, inside the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. Reaching it means leaving Highway 75 for a Forest Service road that tracks the river until the canyon opens into irrigated meadows. Ketchum and Sun Valley lie under 90 minutes south.

A place with history

Pic credit: Hall & Hall

In the late 1800s, the Robinson Bar was a mining claim. Around 1916, Chase Addison Clark homesteaded it and expanded the lodge. He later became governor of Idaho. The Clark family owned the land for more than 70 years, according to Hall & Hall, the brokerage that handled the sale. Clark’s daughter Bethine married Senator Frank Church, whose legislation helped protect the Central Idaho wilderness and the recreation area that now surrounds the ranch. Over the years, the ranch also welcomed guests, became a cross-country ski resort and a French country-style inn.Carole King bought it in 1981.

Restoring the ranch

Pic credit: Hall & Hall

For King, restoring the property meant changing what needed changing and keeping what made the place itself. So she kept the original footprint of the ranch intact and gave its walls and ceilings some structural upgrades.The work stretched across nearly two decades and two major remodels. Robert C. Wyllie handled most of the construction and much of the design. Dave Selene contributed metalwork. King’s daughter, Sherry Goffin Kondor, helped shape the interiors alongside the design firm Citizen Properties. King, on the other hand, carried the role of a coordinator rather than an artist. She said yes to good ideas.So old roofs were replaced with Cor-Ten steel, with dormers added to pull in light. When a giant spruce came down in the nearby forest, she got permission to mill it on site. It became panelling in the log-built recording studio.

Pic credit: Hall & Hall

The hot springs became a blessing. Gravity-fed spring water warmed the floors in the lodge’s kitchen and baths. Geothermal heat also runs through the lodge and studio and fills two pools. As the studio’s Steinway needed steady warmth, this arrangement only helped. The rest of the compound looks like a small village. There is a stone poolhouse carved into a hillside. Eight guest cabins have electricity but no running water. There are two barns, a wood shop, a greenhouse and a chicken house. The five-bedroom lodge holds roughly 7,300 square feet. King has said that no place she has lived felt more like home than this one.The ranch was first listed in 2006 for $19 million. After problems with a bridge on the Forest Service road, the listing was taken off. It returned in 2010 at $16 million. By late 2015, Hall & Hall was asking $9.9 million. According to the broker, such properties don’t often appear on the market. “It isn’t often that a property this unique comes up for sale,” the broker said. “When you close the ranch gate behind you, the clock is turned back to another time and the incredible soul of this place will change one’s life.”The brokerage’s listing page now marks the ranch as sold, with a last asking price of $3,999,000.