Santa Lucia Preserve, Carmel Valley, California: Luxury Conservation Development/Preserve

• Author: Rebecca L. Kihslinger/James M. Mcelfish Jr.
• Pages: 84-104

chapter six

Santa Lucia Preserve, Carmel Valley, California:

Luxury Conservation Development/Preserve

The owners of the 20,000-acre Santa Lucia Preserve (the Preserve) in Mon-

terey County, California, developed and constructed an upscale residential

development while permanently protecting nearly 18,000 acres of the site as

open space. The remaining 2,000 acres, located on the least environmentally

sensitive areas of the site, include a golf course, equestrian and recreational

facilities, and 296 one and one-half- to f‌ive-acre homesites. The independently

managed nonprof‌it Santa Lucia Conservancy was established to manage the

restoration and enhancement of the undeveloped 18,000 “Preserve Lands,” and

will protect the land in perpetuity through fee ownership of nearly 12,000 acres

and conservation easements on an additional 6,000 acres. Funding for man-

agement activities is guaranteed through a $25 million endowment generated

from a dedicated portion of the sales price of each homesite. The Santa Lucia

Conservancy, which operates as a Community Stewardship Organization in

cooperation with the nonprof‌it Sonoran Institute, manages the Preserve through

land protection, resource management, scientif‌ic research, and community edu-

cation programs.

The Preserve rests in the Carmel Valley on the central California coast. Over

50 habitat types and an assortment of species have been identif‌ied within the

Preserve, a diversity that can be attributed to the variation in altitude, temper-

ature, and rainfall.1Much of the land in the Preserve consists of oak woodlands

and savannas, but coastal shrub and chaparral, grasslands, redwood forests,

mixed evergreen forests, Monterey Pine forests, and riparian lands also span

the Preserve, providing numerous niches for wildlife. (See Fig. 6.1.) Nearly

600 species of plants and over 160 species of birds have been identif‌ied.2

Archaeological records have traced settlement patterns back to 500 A.D.,

when Costanoan-speaking Rumsen Indians settled the land.3Europeans f‌irst

came in contact with the indigenous peoples in 1770, after which the land under-

went a number of exchanges, transactions, and occupations.4In the mid-1800s,

the land was converted to a cattle ranch known as Rancho San Carlos. The ranch

84

was later converted in the 1920s by George Gordon Moore into a gentlemen’s

resort, with polo f‌ields, an artif‌icial lake (Moore’s Lake), stables, and a 37-

room hacienda called La Casa Grande, which today is utilized as the private

Ranch Club on the Preserve.5The Great Depression forced Moore to sell his

20,000-acre estate to the Oppenheimer family of Piedmont, California, who

worked the land as a cattle ranch for 50 years.6

santa lucia preserve, carmel valley, california 85

Figure 6.1. Santa Lucia Preserve Vegetation Cover. With permission from the Santa Lucia

Conservancy.