Palo Alto group buys 2,284 acres at Sargent Ranch, ending 10-year battle over proposed quarry on scenic property

An environmental group has purchased nearly all of the remaining land at Sargent Ranch, a vast property south of Gilroy along Highway 101 where Southern California investors sparked a 10-year controversy after proposing to build a sand-and-gravel quarry.

Under the agreement, the Palo Alto-based non-profit Peninsula Open Space Trust will pay $23.04 million to Sargent Ranch Partners LLC, a San Diego development group, to purchase 2,284 acres of the bucolic ranch, one of the largest remaining pieces of undeveloped private property in Santa Clara County and home to mountain lions, bald eagles and steelhead trout.

“It’s classic California,” said Gordon Clark, president of the Peninsula Open Space Trust. “Beautiful rolling hills, iconic oaks, creeks, wetlands and dramatic vistas. A stunning landscape that feels like you are stepping back in time. It’s very gratifying. This has been a goal that so many people have shared for so long.”

The deal, which closed Wednesday, kills plans for the quarry, a proposed 403-acre open-pit mine.

That project, which the investors first proposed in 2015, has been opposed by environmental groups, multiple city councils, including in Santa Clara, Mountain View and Sunnyvale, and the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, which previously inhabited the area for thousands of years.

“I’m so elated,” said Ed Ketchum, chairman of the Amah Mutsun, a group of roughly 600 people who trace their ancestry back to Ohlone villages in the area they call “Juristac.” “From when I was a child, the elders would always say this is a special place that needs to be protected. It was meant not to be developed.”

Howard Justus, a San Diego businessman who leads the investor group that previously owned the property, said he would have no comment on the sale. In the past, he has said the quarry would have been located on just a small portion of the ranch and that its sand and gravel would have been important to Bay Area building projects.

This week’s sale is the third major piece of Sargent Ranch that the land trust has bought from Justus and his partners, culminating in one of the most significant land preservation deals in the Bay Area in recent years.

Last year and in 2024, the trust, known as “POST,” spent an additional $40.7 million to buy two other portions of the property totaling 3,830 acres. The latest purchase gives the trust ownership of 93% of the 6,594-acre ranch — an area six times the size of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

The land trust has signed an option with the investor group to buy the remaining 480 acres. That area contains 15 active oil wells — the only ones in Santa Clara County. They must be capped and the equipment  removed before the sale is complete, Clark said. That is expected to happen by the end of this year, he added. Part of the ranch has natural tar seeps, and oil drilling there dates back to the 1870s.

What will ultimately happen to the entire property, including whether there will be public access, remains unclear.

Clark said that in the next few years, his organization, which is funded largely by private donations from foundations and Silicon Valley contributors, will conduct studies of the wildlife and the landscape. Sargent Ranch is home to badgers, deer, hawks and other animals, serving as a key wildlife corridor between the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Diablo and Gabilan mountain ranges. On a visit earlier this month, a bald eagle was visible on the property.

The land trust will meet with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, the Amah Mutsun Land Trust, and the Santa Clara County Department of Parks and Recreation, along with other groups, to map out an ownership and stewardship plan, Clark said.

The county parks department owns 55,000 acres across 28 parks in Santa Clara County. Several are as big, or larger, than Sargent Ranch, including Joseph D. Grant County Park in the hills east of San Jose, which is 10,882 acres, and Coyote Lake-Harvey Bear Ranch County Park, on the east side of Highway 101 near Morgan Hill, which is 6,695 acres.

“We want to be supportive,” said Todd Lofgren, director of the Santa Clara County parks department. “We are going to work with the partners and community to help create a plan everyone is excited about.”

Any decision to make part or all of Sargent Ranch a new county park would require approval by the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. The parks department has roughly $40 million in a fund reserved for parkland acquisition, and under a voter-approved measure, about $9 million of county general fund money is added every year.

Sargent Ranch has a rich history.

In the late 1700s, when the Spanish built missions nearby at San Juan Bautista, Santa Clara, Carmel and Santa Cruz, natives often fled to avoid cruel conditions, tribal leaders have noted, hiding on Sargent Ranch, in the hills of Pacheco Pass, and other remote locations.

The property became a Mexican land grant in the 1800s and was later purchased by James P. Sargent, a New Hampshire native who came to California with his brothers during the Gold Rush. He became wealthy and eventually represented Santa Clara County in the state Legislature from 1871 to 1873.

During the late 1800s, there was a railroad depot, cottages, a hotel, a post office, a saloon and an open-air dance floor near the ranch.

After a series of other owners came and went, Justus’ group purchased the ranch in 2013 from Wayne Pierce, a La Jolla developer who tried to build golf courses, hotels, a casino and other projects there, only to run into public opposition, pile up debt and eventually file for bankruptcy.

The new owners announced plans for the quarry in 2015, sparking opposition from environmental groups, the Amah Mutsun tribe and others.

David Wallace, a Danville investor who helped broker this week’s sale between the land trust and Justus’ group, noted that the investors had waited a decade for county approval for the quarry.

“I think they would have gotten the permit ultimately for the quarry,” he said. “But at the end of the day, it was probably as much fatigue as anything. And POST put an offer on the table that was worthy of consideration.”

Acquiring the property is the largest land deal that POST has completed since its founding in 1977. The ranch has ranked near the top of Bay Area land conservation groups’ lists for decades.

“We haven’t been on this property since the 1800s,” Ketchum said of his tribal members. “We are all looking forward to exploring it. What a blessing.”