The Ponderosa

A view of the front lake from the crow’s nest above the roof line of The Ponderosa lodge.

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The early morning summer sunlight bathes the front facade of The Ponderosa.

PONDEROSA St. Clair’s secret retreat

By Loyd McIntosh Photos by Jerry Martin

Jeff Martin, one of The Ponderosa’s five owners, and sons Reed, right, and Miles admire a bass Miles caught in the lake on the property.

In the travel issue of the noted Southern magazine, Oxford American, published about 10 years ago, a few of the pieces focused on tourist towns, quaint little fishing villages and 120 year-old hotels. Most of the magazine focused on the writer’s favorite tranquil spot — a shady grove overlooking a stream here or a hidden coastal inlet there. Almost all of these pieces had one thing in common: secrecy.

The pieces didn’t tell you how to get to that shady grove or where exactly they could find that perfect coastal inlet. The reasons varied from the desire to keep it from getting crowded to fear that ruffians would swarm en masse and begin spray-painting “Leroy Was Here” in bright colors all over the walls of their favorite spelunking cave.

The Ponderosa, a sprawling estate in St. Clair County,

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PONDEROSA St. Clair’s secret retreat The Ponderosa entrance gate

Deer heads line the walls.

The spiral staircase leading from the second floor of the cabin to the watchtower

follows the same template, not because Discover Magazine wants to keep it a secret, but because the owners want to keep it as big a secret as Bruce Wayne keeps the Bat Cave. In fact, one of the five principal owners of this sportsman’s paradise doesn’t even want to be identified. Henceforth, he will be known by another Ponderosa landowner’s moniker, Ben Cartwright.

Although skeptical of the press coverage, Cartwright and fellow owner Jeff Martin are happy — but also a little skittish — about showing off this 711-acre getaway just 15 minutes from Pell City. To be honest, the five men who use the Ponderosa as a place to hunt, fish and relax, have legitimate reasons to want to keep their ranch a secret.

The group used to hold weddings, church outings and other events at the ranch, usually as a favor to a friend rather than as a business model. Cartwright said they discontinued that after a particularly rowdy wedding party ended the night doing doughnuts in the grass. “When (Ben) told me you wanted to do an article, I said, “ ‘Dude. You realize what’s going to happen, don’t you,’ ” said Martin. But they agreed to let readers inside their paradise anyway.

Visiting immediately puts the mind at a different place and time. The entrance features a Southwestern-themed formation of giant stones and a wide, iron gate with the name of the ranch emblazoned on the front. As you follow the dirt road to the poplar lodge, you may find turkeys wandering through the grass or maybe even a deer or two in the fall and winter.

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Jeff Martin, one of five owners of The Ponderosa, kicks back in this sportsman’s paradise.

As one rounds the corner, the eyes are drawn to another rock formation, this one towering more than 20 feet in height located in the middle of the front lake. The entire ranch is immaculate and, perhaps most importantly, peaceful. It’s a far cry from the state they found it when the group purchased the property 12 years ago.

“It’s amazing what we’ve done out there. It was all grown up. You could drive across the dam and hardly see the water,” said Cartwright. “They had let trees grow up all over the dam.

The whole back side of the dam was all grown up.”

Inside the lodge, the real purpose of the Ponderosa comes into focus: hunting and fishing. Everywhere you look you’ll see fish and other game all over the walls, most of them bagged by the ranch’s owners, friends or family members. There are deer and turkeys killed on the property, as well as other game animals.

There is buffalo from Nebraska, a bobcat – stuffed and mounted to look as though it’s in a fight with a rattlesnake discovered on the property – and a pair of caribou from Alaska.

Mounted high on the walls on either side of the stone fireplace, the massive caribou heads are always a conversation starter.

“A lot of people come up here and ask, ‘Where did they come from.’ I tell them, ‘The Ragland Hunting Club was running some beagles through here and I shot ‘em both,’” said Cartwright.

However, the pièce de résistance is a towering, eight-and-a-

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PONDEROSA St. Clair’s secret retreat half-foot giraffe head, a memento from a hunting trip Martin took to Africa a few years ago. Martin had it shipped to a taxidermist in Lincoln before taking ownership of the giant head and displaying it at the base of the lodge’s staircase. As you could imagine, the sight of a enormous giraffe head is bound to bring up a story.

Martin, the owner of Vicious Fishing, a highly-rated fishing equipment company with large sponsorships in the B.A.S.S. pro tour and other professional fishing organizations, said he has found a business purpose for the lodge in the fall. Each October, the Ponderosa plays host to a handful of pro anglers as well as writers from such media outlets as ESPN, Field & Stream and FLW Magazine.

The week fishing on the lakes stocked full of bass, crappie, bream and catfish as well as the chance to test new equipment lines is a highly anticipated one for the writers and anglers, even if the Ponderosa is smack in the middle of a technological no-man’s land.

“We’ll have six or eight of the best writers from around the country come in and five or six pros up here. They stay up here for about a week, and that’s what they get done. They get a lot of articles done for the upcoming season,” said Martin. “They’re always like, ‘Do you have wireless Internet so we can get our stories out on time?’ I always say, ‘Nope. You can get them out Monday when you leave.’”

In short, the Ponderosa is the perfect man cave, an ideal place to cast a line or enjoy the smell of gunpowder without anyone telling you to put your feet down or put that cigar out – that is, if you can score an invitation.

A view of The Ponderosa’s great room from above.

The giant rock formation in the middle of the front lake.

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E I T H E R W AY, I T ’ S

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R E A LT O R

The bedroom provides plenty of sleeping and sitting space.

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