Is There a Conspiracy Against Ranching in the Federal Government?
For many American producers, the eviction of 12 ranching families on Point Reyes is just the latest chapter in a long march to erasure.
In the town of Bolinas, just south of Point Reyes, Billie Thibodeau runs a grazing-for-hire service, cleaning up fire fuel.
This stretch of California was once a blue-collar promised land on the razor edge of America. It is fast becoming a ghost coast—summer homes for billionaires, trails and weekend photo ops for the leisure set.
When Thibodeau first arrived, she was struck by a series of abandoned Victorian farmhouses in apparent disrepair. She couldn’t understand why so many farms and ranches stood empty. She began asking around.
“Nobody owns these ranches,” she tells me. “The government owns them. They were basically stolen from the original owners by eminent domain in the early 60s. One of these farmhouses looks like it has government officials living in it. I see Parks vehicles there all the time. It’s been totally trashed. There’s a lot of stories of how they’ve gotten rid of the ranchers here.”