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Where and what is the Ranch?
The village of Cambria lays nearly equidistance from San Francisco and Los Angeles alongside twisty and windswept Highway 1 on California's Central Coast. This is the Southern Gateway to the Big Sur Coastline and famed Hearst Castle sits just a few fog-shrouded miles to the North.
What is called East West Ranch and much of what is now Cambria was once part of the huge Phelan Ranch. The underlying Rancho Santa Rosa Spanish Land Grant covered this entire area during California's time as a Spanish colony, reaching miles up and down the Central Coast. Over the years, it was broken up and sold to become the large holdings of dairy and ranching families. Thousands of acres of the land grant came under the ownership of the Phelan family before becoming fragmented. Some tracts were sold for development, while others like the Ranch remained forest or open range.
Around the turn of the century, the heavily forested Ranch was chain-dragged and burned to clear the land for cattle grazing. Only 70 acres of rare Monterey Pine survived and still crown the Ranch ridge. The Fiscalini family bought the 400 + acres that would become East West Ranch in the early 1900's. As they also had larger holdings south of Cambria and east of Highway 1, the property became known as the Fiscalini Town Ranch.
Ray Shamel purchased the property surrounding the Ranch on the north and south, and, in the 1920's, subdivided the land into tiny lots to create the face of Cambria, as we know it today. In the '80's, the Fiscalinis sold the Ranch to the Rancho Pacifica developers after the taxes on the property soared due to the budding subdivisions growing up around the property in a horseshoe shape.
How the Ranch was won.Rancho Pacifica Developments had big dreams of building thousands of homes, a resort hotel, and a golf course complete with a made-made lake and aerial gondolas. Locals were alarmed at the scale of the plan and organized as Friends of the RanchLand to protest what was seen as an out-sized development. After years of trying to win approval for their plans, Rancho Pacifica Developments succumbed to bankruptcy and the property was sold at auction in 1993 to an offshore corporation calling themselves Foundation, Ltd.
Soon, the new owners floated their own development plan called East West Ranch. Originally said to be a plan for only 100 homes, it quickly grew to over 600 units including commercial and industrial development. In response, Friends of the RanchLand raised thousands of dollars and hired the Environmental Defense Center to fight the East West Ranch Development. The organization held fundraisers, did legal research on historic trails, worked with the California Coastal Commission and local government, distributed information, collected petitions, and organized testimony at county and state hearings. Their efforts managed to bring the proposed development to a standstill over water issues and the destruction of historic trails.
The developers then filed with the county to force the local water district to annex the Ranch so the development could not be denied water. At this point, Friends of the RanchLand realized they were close to being out-maneuvered. Their hope to buy the Ranch to save it from development seemed dead since all the land trusts (local and national) they approached to help with acquisition had turned them down flat for one reason or another. Just as all seemed lost, a land trust in San Francisco responded to a letter of inquiry and agreed to help.
The American Land Conservancy agreed to take the project with one condition - that a local group would be available to put the deal together and help with fundraising. The developers added a condition of their own - that the local group could not be Friends of the RanchLand since they had opposed the development. That, and they wanted $11.1 million for the property with a deadline of one year.
The Los Osos-Baywood Park Chapter of the Foundation for Small Wilderness Area Preservation came to the rescue and agreed to take the project (they'd done three land acquisitions already). They mentored a new chapter comprised of Cambrians under the name North Coast SWAP. North Coast SWAP then partnered with the American Land Conservancy, the State Coastal Conservancy, local government, and members of the community to buy the land and turn it into park and open space. Locals contributed over $1.2 million in cash to the purchase with the crucial buzzer shot being an in-kind donation of extremely valuable land owned by Mid State Bank.
The bank had planned to build a larger building and a shopping center on the meadow property adjacent the Ranch, but instead donated almost all its holdings to the Ranch. This completed a requirement for a $4 million local contribution to the purchase and the addition of this creekside property raised the size of the new park to just under 440 acres. In all, the purchase price was met in both record time and with only minutes to spare. The Society of Parks and Recreation Professionals recognized the incredible effort of the community and all the public and private partners in the purchase with its highest award of merit.
The Cambria Community Services District holds fee-title title on the Ranch and Friends of the Fiscalini Ranch Preserve holds a protective conservation easement and a contract to eventually manage and maintain the property for the public.
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