Less than a year after a historic deal to preserve 937 acres in Coyote Valley where tech giants Apple and Cisco once proposed building massive headquarters on San Jose’s southern reaches, a coalition of government agencies and environmental groups has completed a new $18 million deal to buy another key property in the area.
In a sale that closed Monday, the groups purchased Tilton Ranch, an 1,861-acre expanse of rolling grasslands, oak trees and serpentine rock outcroppings in South Coyote Valley, north of Morgan Hill.
The property, which has been in the same ranching family for 103 years, will be preserved for wildlife habitat, open space, hiking, horse riding and mountain biking, eventually enabling trails to run from South San Jose all the way to Morgan Hill.
The broader region was a flashpoint for battles between developers and open space advocates dating back to the 1980s. But the purchase of Tilton Ranch is the latest in at least half a dozen major acquisitions since 2014 to preserve the rural character of Silicon Valley’s southern edges along both sides of Highway 101 where San Jose’s vast suburbs give way to hayfields, pumpkin stands and herds of cattle, reminders of an earlier time.
“In many ways, it’s a gateway to California’s past and thanks to the seller’s commitment to protecting these natural resources to its future as well,” said Walter Moore, president of the Peninsula Open Space Trust, a Palo Alto-based non-profit group that helped fund the acquisition.
The property is located in unincorporated Santa Clara County, west of Highway 101, near Hale Avenue and Willow Springs Road. It is home to deer, mountain lions, bobcats, golden eagles and a variety of endangered and threatened plant species.
It has been in the same family since Howard Tilton, a Gilroy rancher, purchased it in 1917.
“I spent a lot of long days out here,” said Tom Burback, 25, a fifth-generation member of the family. “I worked cows and rode all around the ranch. My cousins and I would fix fences.”
Burback’s mother, Janet Baird Burback, and other family members agreed to sell and move their operations to Montana. As the area around Morgan Hill and Gilroy has become developed, there are fewer large animal vets, more traffic and more difficulty operating a cattle ranch, they said.
“If I could pack up the whole ranch and the house and move it somewhere else, I’d love it,” said Janet Baird Burback, who grew up on the property. “But I can’t. I miss what we did there. We were in our own little world. But it’s not financially stable to do ranching there any more.”
The family’s roots go back to 1856 in California. Janet Baird Burback’s great-grandmother was the daughter of the founder of Daly City, John D. Daly. Her grandfather, Jere Sheldon, was a grandnephew of Henry Miller, the famed “Cattle King of California” who came to San Francisco as a 22-year-old German immigrant in 1850 and by the time of his death in 1916 owned 1.4 million acres of land from the Bay Area to Bakersfield, with 1 million head of cattle.
“We like it here,” said Tom Burback. “But this is a good opportunity to start over in Montana.”
Under the deal, the property will become part of the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority’s holdings by the end of next year. Since 1993, the agency has preserved roughly 28,000 acres in Santa Clara County for hiking, biking and horse riding.
Some cattle grazing will continue on the ranch to keep fire danger down and reduce invasive weeds, said Andrea Mackenzie, general manager of the open space authority.
“This is one of the largest remaining working ranches in Santa Clara County,” she said. “It will remain as a working land natural landscape right next to the 10th largest city in America.”
Standing on a hilltop recently, Mackenzie looked out over the property. To the east, across Highway 101, Henry Coe State Park and Anderson Reservoir loomed. To the west, the Santa Cruz Mountains and the summit of Mount Umunhum. Coyote Valley stretched out below.
“People want the peace of mind knowing that the land is preserved even if they never set foot on it,” she said.
The property won’t be open to the public for up to five years. That’s in large part because much of the funding requires detailed mapping and preservation of endangered plants and animals, and plans to preserve them.
Last November, the city of San Jose, the Peninsula Open Space Trust and others spent $93 million to acquire 937 acres in North Coyote Valley from developers Brandenburg Properties and the Sobrato Organization.
The latest deal is two miles to the south. Overall, $5.9 million for it came from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; $4 million from state parks and water bonds; $2.4 million from the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority; $2 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; $1.4 million from the Peninsula Open Space Trust; $1.4 million from the Santa Clara Valley Habitat Agency and $1 million from Santa Clara County Parks.
The Baird-Burback family sold the property to the Santa Clara Valley Habitat Agency, a government agency that preserves open space as part of a broad countywide plan in which developers pay fees to offset harm they do to endangered species on their properties so they can still obtain permits. In December, the habitat agency also paid $6.5 million to purchase 603 other acres on the south side of the Tilton Ranch from the family.
Edmund Sullivan, executive officer of the habitat agency, said the properties form a key connection between the Diablo Range and the Santa Cruz Mountains to allow wildlife to roam, breed and not get surrounded by development.
“This is such an important landscape for wildlife movement,” he said. “Getting the genetic diversity across the landscape is critical.”
