GHOST COAST: Original Point Reyes Ranchers Forced Out for Urban Recreation
Looking back at the beginnings of Point Reyes National Seashore to make sense of where we are today.
Readers often ask me why the Point Reyes ranchers sold their land to the government in the first place.
The truth is, they never wanted to.
The story of Point Reyes National Seashore is one of a wealthy, disconnected urban elite separating working families from farmland for their own personal recreational use.
The government’s current actions to remove these families once and for all is the inevitable culmination of an effort that began almost a century ago.
“All of our families were essentially threatened with eminent domain,” a daughter of one of the Point Reyes ranchers tells me on condition of anonymity. “We did not want to sell but sold out of necessity. We did it under the understanding that we would be leased back the land indefinitely.”
Ranchers Pushed Out for Urban Recreation
This effort began in the 1930s, as the wealthy residents of the San Francisco Bay Area searched for recreational areas close to their urban centers. They soon settled on Point Reyes, where immigrant families had ranched and farmed for decades, scratching out a hardscrabble life on the windswept peninsula.
In his detailed book Ranching on the Point Reyes Peninsula, local historian D.S. Livingston documents a pioneer existence with no electricity or telephone. Zena Cabral, the widow of dairyman Joseph A. Mendoza, said:
To tell you of the hardships, well the only things I can say is there were no facilities of any kind. There were no roads…there was no school…We had to make money to pay the taxes, to pay the interest, and to pay the mortgage, and to pay the teacher, besides food and clothing and everything. We worked awfully hard and I am not ashamed to tell you that every bit of that land was acquired by the sweat of our brow.
Zena was an immigrant from the Azores Islands, the widow of longtime Point Reyes dairyman Joseph A. Mendoza. She was described by the local paper as an idealist who “represented the old days on Point Reyes, but also the new and vital spirit that her children carry on.”
When park supporters from the Bay Area joined with the Sierra Club to illicit public pressure and funds from all over the country, Zena traveled to D.C. to plead her case for her community. Her 1961 speech before Congress received national attention.
“I was not born in this country. I was born in Europe. But since I was a child I wanted to come to America, to the land where there was respect for human dignity, the land of the free…where the minorities would not be trampled on, where there would be no dictators.
[Point Reyes] is where my children were born…and my grandchildren were raised.
My grandson, after he came from the service, that is where he is living. The other grandson that is married and who has a baby—I have a little great-granddaughter—has his family there. My other two grandsons, their choice is dairying, the farm.
Now I am faced with the possibility of losing everything that I have worked for. The strangest thing is that I never was approached. Everything was done underhanded…Nobody ever came to me to ask, ‘Do you want to sell your property for a park?’
…If my ranches would be taken for defense, well, you have to sacrifice, but it is for the benefit of all, for the benefit of my family as well as for the others.
But for recreation, what kind of recreation did I have when I was a youngster? Work and save so my children would have a sense of security and heritage that I felt belonged to them. Now every inch of my land is supposed to disappear.”
Despite the ranchers’ entreaties, President John F. Kennedy authorized the creation of the National Seashore in September 1962. The land would officially become a National Seashore in 1972.
Seeking to avoid development and protect the agricultural heritage of the area, locals cautiously supported the plan, provided the government would guarantee long-term leaseback for the ranchers and dairymen whose land was seized.
California’s Ghost Coast
Over the decades since, the peninsula has become a ghost coast. Ranchers have slowly left, disappearing one by one.
A short TV spot for Evening Magazine entitled “Disappearing Ranchers of Marin” documents one family forced to sell their cattle and leave after relocated Tule elk destroyed their ranching operation.
“The Indians at least when they put them off their land, they put them on a reservation,” says Merv McDonald. “But we don’t even have a reservation to go to. Probably a house in town. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to move to town.”
End of an Era on Point Reyes
For years, Point Reyes was a lonely, tough place where the descendants of Portuguese, Swiss, and German immigrants scratched out a living, creating their own American dream by producing food to feed a growing country. When urban greed turned its sights on their farming community, they didn’t stand a chance.
Promises of long-term coexistence with the federal government were always hollow. From the beginning, it was never anything more than a matter of time.
Never trust the government. A deal is a deal until the next crowd comes along to change the deal.
Heartbreaking