Apple co-founder to sell huge Carmel Valley ranch for $35 million to become public nature preserve
Rana Creek Ranch is half the size of the city of San Francisco, with "the grandeur of many of California's state parks."
A legendary Silicon Valley tech leader who bought a vast ranch in Carmel Valley 40 years ago is selling the property to a conservation group to become a new public preserve and cultural site.
In 1977, Mike Markkula gave two unknown, shaggy-haired computer programmers, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, $250,000 to help turn their young partnership into a new company. He become the third employee at Apple, served as its CEO and chairman of the board, and at one time owned 26% of the company.
Markkula, an engineer who had worked at Intel before meeting the duo, used part of his fortune to buy one of the largest properties in Monterey County, the historic Rana Creek Ranch, a 14,100-acre landscape that stretches 8 miles through Carmel Valley, between Salinas Valley and Big Sur.
After listing the property for sale off and on since 2013, Markkula, of Woodside, has signed an agreement to sell it to the Wildlands Conservancy, an environmental group based in San Bernardino County, for $35 million. Escrow is set to close July 30.
The conservancy, which operates 22 other preserves in California, and one in Oregon, plans to open the scenic property to the public for hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding in the coming years for free, said Frazier Haney, executive director of the Wildlands Conservancy.
“The property is the size of — and has the grandeur of — many of California’s state parks,” Haney said. “It’s a wonder land of oak-filled valleys and magnificent flower-studded ridgelines.”
The property has been a working cattle ranch for roughly 200 years. Before that, it was the site of a key Esselen tribal village. It remains home today to black bears, mountain lions, golden eagles and other wildlife.
Markkula declined a request for an interview. In 2016 he told the Wall Street Journal that he and his wife, Linda, bought the property as a second home and possible place to retire. The previous owners, the Marble family, had owned it for generations as a cattle ranch.
“We were the first ones to look at it, and we bought it on the spot,” Markkula told the newspaper. “We wanted some place where there would be enough land around us that it would be private and quiet.”
The couple paid $8 million in 1982 for 9,000 acres, he said. They later purchased other properties around it, and built a conference center, half-mile long airstrip, and other amenities on a parcel adjacent to Carmel Valley Road. The overall property — about half the size of San Francisco — has remained as a cattle ranch, where Markkula and his family spent time, and he held meetings.
Haney said the Wildlands Conservancy plans to use the facilities to operate a regional conference center for environmental and open space groups, and as an education center for school children.
The Esselen Tribe also will play an important role in the land’s next chapter.
The tribe, whose members were removed from their lands and taken by Spanish settlers to the Carmel, Soledad and San Antonio missions in the late 1700s, plans to purchase about 1,800 acres from the Wildlands Conservancy.
Tribal members will work with the conservancy to help manage the wider landscape, including with controlled burns to reduce fire risk — a traditional native practice that dates back centuries. They also plan to recreate the original village, called Cappany, said Tom Little Bear Nason, chairman of the Esselen Tribe of Monterey County.
“We were taken from these lands, taken to the mission, and now we are able to go back,” said Nason. “Many members of our tribe are direct descendants of this land.”
Nason grew up nearby and has a personal connection to the property. His father, Brad Nason, who died in 2017, worked there as a cowboy from the 1940s until the 1980s.
“After school I would go there with my dad and build fences, and brand cattle,” he said. “It’s like a second home.”
The deal was funded in part by the Newsom administration. On May 25, the state Wildlife Conservation Board approved contributing $24 million in state parks and water bond funding, and the State Coastal Conservancy contributed $2 million.
For the past 15 years, California’s state parks department has acquired almost no new land, opening only one new park, Dos Rios Ranch, near Modesto, since 2009. Former governors Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger threatened to close dozens of state parks to balance their budgets.
The Wildlands Conservancy has acquired 200,000 acres for its public preserves since 1995, using private donations, funding from foundations and government grants.
As a result, the conservancy’s public lands system is now growing faster than the state park system. Over the past five years, the conservancy has purchased the 29,000-acre Eel Canyon Preserve in Mendocino County from the family of financier Dean Witter; the Santa Margarita River Trails Preserve along five miles of oak-shaded trails next to the Santa Margarita River in San Diego County; a mile of coastline and redwood forest at Seawood Cape Preserve on the Humboldt County coast; and a mile of the West Walker River at Aspen Glen Reserve in Mono County.
“This is an amazing opportunity,” said State Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, who advocated for the public funding for the Carmel Valley deal. “I would always love for state parks to be out there and lead but the important thing is the preservation.”
Had the property been purchased by a private buyer, its zoning would have allowed for at least 60 ranchettes and luxury home sites.
Markkula has a history of helping fund conservation groups, including the Nature Conservancy and the Alaska Raptor Center. He also has donated to conservative political groups like the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, and Bay Area nonprofits including the Computer History Museum, Tech Museum in San Jose, and the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula. He provided initial funding to create the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
Markkula had put the property up for sale for as much as $59 million starting in 2013, said Pete Clark, a Paso Robles real estate broker who listed and sold the ranch along with Hall and Hall, a Montana real estate company.
“He loves the ranch and his family loves the ranch. He raised his kids there,” Clark said. “But they all moved on to other interests and he wants others to enjoy it now.”