His second ranch was a 290-acre property in Malibu Canyon named Yearling Row, which he purchased in 1951. It was in Cornell Corners right by Malibu Lake, and there he was able to truly build something. He raised thoroughbreds and had two brood mares named Torch Carrier and Bracing. Every year, he would produce two foals from those two mares, and each year, a guy would come by to decide if the foals were good enough for the Delmar sale, the premier horse sale on the West Coast. Reagan’s foals were always of quality and always made the sale. The shingled house was small and modest. Mrs. Reagan was afraid it was a firetrap, and they never stayed there for the night. On the walls inside, though, they had hung pictures from their various motion pictures. Reagan just loved the place, and he would work his heart out fixing it. He built sturdy wooden stalls, marked out the trails, and erected a new fence. He loved working with his hands, and Mrs. Reagan would sometimes join him in his labors by painting fence posts or helping to clean things up. There were three-and-a-half miles of a three-rail aluminized fence on that place, and Mrs. Reagan followed behind her husband, helping to paint the fence after he put it up. They did the whole thing by themselves.
There were two reservoirs on the property. Above one of the reservoirs was a road called Mulholland Drive. One day, a car with a fancy government seal on it pulled up to the side of the road. The driver got out and looked down at the place. Finally he drove in and asked Reagan, “Are you the owner?”
“Yes, I am,” he answered.
“Did you build these reservoirs?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Well, you know, you’re entitled to a government subsidy for all this. Fill out these applications.”
Reagan interrupted him, “You know, when I built them, I built them with my own funds, and I never intended to have any government subsidy. I’d like to keep it that way.”
In the late 1950s, there was a fire called the Liberty Fire that started in nearby Liberty Canyon. It burned through Yearling Row and took out the main barn, but not the stables. In fact, the stables are still there.
At lunchtime, the work hands at the ranch would sit around in a circle and eat together. Reagan would just bring something like an apple and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich—nothing formal. A friend of Reagan’s during those years told me that at lunch one day Reagan said, “You know, the Air Force just junked or salvaged five million dollars’ worth of dark glasses, and the Navy just ordered the same thing for another five million dollars. It just drives me nuts. You know, I ought to become president of the United States.”
According to Reagan’s friend, the foreman was the only one who stayed on the place. Reagan would say, “Well, I won’t be around for a while, I’ve got to go to work.” That meant he was going to get on a train and go back East for his speeches with General Electric. He held that property for almost twenty years, finally selling it to his neighbor, Paramount Pictures, when he became governor.
In 1968, the Reagans purchased Rancho California in Riverside County, north of San Diego. It was remote and far off the beaten trail, and Reagan’s hope was to turn this ranch into a retreat. In Sacramento, he no doubt felt confined, and this was the place that would allow him to get out and do some riding once he left office. However, he became frustrated, because there was no water or power service. So he decided to sell the place and began his search for the perfect place on earth. That search eventually led to his ranch in the sky.
Longtime friend Bill Wilson was the one who found the Reagans their final ranch. Wilson and his wife Betty had a ranch near the base of Refugio Canyon north of Santa Barbara, and the Reagans visited them often. During those visits Reagan really grew to like the area, and so when Bill heard there was a ranch for sale, he contacted Reagan at once. After he was elected president, Reagan appointed Bill as ambassador to the Vatican.
Reagan didn’t need any urging. Soon after, Bill drove with the Reagans up the Refugio Canyon Road to see the place. The drive up the winding, one-lane road is seven miles long, and it seems to go on and on. Mrs. Reagan asked, “Where are you taking us?” They just kept going, with no answer.
Finally, even Reagan said, “Bill, is this going to end at some point?” It was soon apparent that the drive up the tortuous road was well worth it. Even before they arrived, Reagan was awed by the graceful mountains and thick clusters of oaks. “It’s absolutely gorgeous here,” he told Bill. “I love it.” Once they reached the ranch, the Reagans decided almost immediately that they would buy this place.
Rancho del Cielo is the only one in the Santa Ynez Mountain Range that is shaped like a dish and thereby provides some great useable land. When Reagan first bought the property, it was much sparser than it is now. There was nothing on the ranch, just the simple adobe house built a century earlier, though “house” might be too kind a word. It was more like a hut, with aluminum sheets for the roof. There was no pond, few trees by the house, and no fences. Reagan, however, looked at that plot of land the way he looked at everything: there is an opportunity here.
He went to work at once. By himself, the President laid the sandstone patio in front of the house. He would go out with his Jeep and collect large sandstone rocks and bring them back. Next, he would pour the concrete before laying the rocks in place. He was very handy.
The President extended the house. Previously, it had ended where the L-shaped living room-dining room was. He took down the chicken wire and the corrugated aluminum. He said, “This house needs to go back to looking the way nature wanted it to, to fit in here on this beautiful spot. No aluminum. We’ll get rid of all of that.”
He also erected the fence, largely by himself. In the hot sun, he would use a two-handed posthole digger and pull out clumps of earth from the rock-hard soil. Next, he would gently lay in the telephone poles that Dennis had brought up from Pacific Gas and Electric, lining them up. There is a short video of him in which you see him dressed in a tee shirt and work gloves digging the holes for the telephone poles. He was using a string to measure to see if they were even. Looking at the camera, he said, “Very scientific work.”
He loved physical labor, which was something the press could never quite understand. Every year, the President hosted a party for the traveling press at Barney Clinger’s estate in Santa Barbara. At that party, Sam Donaldson once said, “Now, Mr. President, I hear you like to go out and trim trees and cut wood.”
“Yes, yes I do,” the President responded
Donaldson went on, “Now, just how big is the ranch?”
“Six hundred and eighty-eight acres.”
“Well, Mr. President, at that rate you’ll never be through trimming.”
“I hope not, Sam,” he said.
The press was allowed to come to the ranch for just a few events during Reagan’s entire presidency. One was during the Queen’s visit and another was when he signed the tax relief bill, which was the largest tax cut in American history. Back in 1981, there had been a spirited debate on Capitol Hill before the Democratic Congress finally passed the President’s tax cut. He chose to sign the bill at the ranch where he was riding, rather than return to the White House. In the photos of him signing the bill, he is sitting on one of the pigskin-covered chairs at the table on the patio he built.
While he was signing the tax bill, Sam Donaldson blurted out, “Mr. President, are you thinking about selling this ranch anytime soon?”
The President shot back, “You can’t sell heaven.”
Another time, at a birthday party for Mrs. Reagan, the President said that if the ranch wasn’t heaven, it “probably has the same zip code.”
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A RANCH IS