The hot tubs, private trails, and deer packs of Sea RanchPhotos and text by Caitlin Donohue
The Pomo indians, original inhabitants of the land where the Sea Ranch community now stands, burned down their huts when they fell into states of disarray. No carpet shampoo. No broom. I could get into that. Make the bed? Nah, let’s just burn it down and build a new one!
Their devil-may-care attitude to home design, however, does not extend to the current residents of the coastal Sonoma County community. ‘Sea Ranch style’ was developed here, appropriately enough; natural wood architectural beauts with emphases on windows and decks. No overhanging eaves allowed. No fences. Indigenous plant landscaping only.
The 1,211 homes in the planned community are usually empty. 65% of them are vacation homes, sporadically occupied. They perch along the Ranch’s ten miles of sea bluff and sweeping Northern California tundra, which was totally deforested in the late 1800s and early 20th century by waves of European immigration, the Gold Rush and a freakin’ sawmill.
I’ve been going to Sea Ranch since I was a small thing and always loved its other-worldliness. My family went here, above all, to sit in hot tubs, play board games and gawk at deer packs. City folk, go figure.
Back then I took the vast expanses of grasses and cypress groves at face value. I hardly imagined that in the late 60s this place set off an environmental class struggle firestorm. The original developer of Sea Ranch, a subsidiary of Castle & Cook, Inc., bought the land in 1963 in the hopes of rehabilitation. They plotted out neighborhoods designed to minimize impact on the mistreated ecosystem.
But the plan, initially bereft of public paths to the beach, rang bells of alarm for people that were into… going to the beach. Citizen’s groups… a ballot initiative… finally all the hoo-hah led to the establishment of the Coastal Commission, the board that watches over Californians’ right to access their beloved waves.
But now I’m pretty sure everyone loves Sea Ranch. It smacks of “away,” of adult people summer camp and just a little of hobbit town (check out James Hubbel’s chapel). Everyone that is, except for those green saps, the carsick-prone. Highway 1, whose beautiful, vertiginous meanders you must traverse to reach the community, is no joke. Which I suppose is why they built the miniscule Sea Ranch airport. Rich folk, go figure.
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