The Economic Behind Tejon Ranch Like Business

An hour north of Los Angeles the interstate climbs through a pass called the Grapevine, and for about forty miles on both sides there is nothing. No houses, no side roads, no towns. In the most populous state in the country there is a piece of private land the size of a small county with almost nothing built on it. Tejon Ranch is 270,000 acres — the largest private landholding in California, in one continuous ownership since before the Civil War. It was assembled by a naval officer who ran the US Army's camel experiment and who, as Superintendent of Indian Affairs, established a reservation on the land he later came to own. California subdivided everything. It turned orange groves into suburbs and cattle range into freeways. It did that relentlessly for a century, right up to this fence line, and then it stopped. This is why. Chapters 0:00 The empty forty miles 1:38 Edward Beale and the camels 3:49 Superintendent of Indian Affairs 4:30 The Sebastian Reservation 5:12 The reservation is abandoned 5:42 Four Mexican land grants 6:43 What that sequence means 7:37 1912: the family sells 7:50 Harry Chandler 9:11 A ranch becomes a holding 9:54 A century of patience 11:17 The arithmetic changes 11:39 Environmental review 12:07 Why the ranch is ecologically extraordinary 12:34 Condor country 13:31 The long fight 13:57 The 2008 conservation agreement 14:35 Why it did not end the fight 15:24 Centennial, approved and overturned 15:39 What the company actually does 16:33 So has Tejon Ranch fallen? 17:30 The bet that was right and wrong 18:14 Preservation by procrastination 19:05 What was actually lost 19:59 Today