Jeff Bezos is Leaving Amazon for Adventures in Space

Hi folks, it’s Brad. Jeff Bezos’s sprawling ranch in West Texas, about 40 miles northeast of the town of Van Horn, is more than just the launch site for his audacious trip into space, planned for July 20. Since Bezos and his lawyers started secretively buying parcels of ranch land there about 20 years ago, it’s also been a private retreat—a place where he can pursue his personal interests and most expensive hobbies largely out of sight.

For example, there’s a domed high-powered telescope on the property, where Bezos and his family can peer at the stars on cloudless Texas nights. He’s got a collection of dune buggies, flat-bed trucks and Rivian electric vehicles that he often drives, presumably over the objections of advisers who want to keep Amazon.com Inc.’s valuable founder safely in the back seat. Inside one of the mountains in the nearby Sierra Diablo range, Bezos is spending tens of millions of dollars to build the 10,000 Year Clock—a mechanical monument that will never play the same musical chime twice and whose cuckoo will emerge once a millennium.