An isolated 1,000-acre beef ranch in Tomasini Canyon north of Point Reyes Station may leave the hands of the ranching family that has owned it for over a century. Last week, owner Leroy Martinelli listed the property—minus a parcel that houses a defunct landfill—for $12.3 million.
If it sells, the land could fall out of agricultural use. Mr. Martinelli said he attempted to sell development rights to the Marin Agricultural Land Trust but encountered legal obstacles related to a road right-of-way for which he could not obtain a clear title. He turned the issue over to his lawyer but said no progress had been made in the past four years.
“I finally got disgusted,” he said. “So I decided, I’m 87 years old… I got to a point where that was that. I’m going to put it up for sale.”
Jamison Watts, MALT’s executive director, said in an email that his organization is interested in seeing the ranch permanently protected and is “exploring ways to make that a reality.”
The listed property is comprised of three parcels and has no ranch house, although there is a small cabin. The former sanitary landfill, commonly known as “the dump” in its heyday, abuts the parcels. Situated on 25 acres, the dump was closed in 1998 and still undergoes regular testing.
Mr. Martinelli said he didn’t know what the future of the ranch held, but theorized that “if someone buys it, it will probably be horse people. Horses in Marin seem to be a big thing.”
Once a part of James Black’s holdings in the 19th century, the ranch was likely a dairy in the 1800s, historian Dewey Livingston surmised. Since the Martinelli family purchased it in 1908, it has been used strictly for grazing cattle and sheep. As many as 1,800 ewes once grazed there, Mr. Martinelli said.
Today he leases the pasture to Sonoma County rancher Barbara Hall, whom he estimated ran about 100 cows on the property. A deer hunting club from Petaluma leases a small area with a bunkhouse.
The area has a storied history. According to a 1987 interview with Elmer Martinelli, Leroy’s father, the family earned $1,000 a month from bootleggers who ran stills at the ranch during Prohibition. Since people renting land for bootlegging could lose their property, the family sold (and fenced) off the acre with the stills to an uncle. Eventually, someone gave them away and the government raided the
operation.
Mr. Martinelli himself faced criminal charges in federal court in 1966 for shooting two bald eagles on the ranch, which he claimed attacked his ewes. The trial resulted in a hung jury, and he was acquitted. He recalled proving his point at trial by pulling sheep guts and wool out of one of the eagles’ beaks, explaining that the prosecution “didn’t clean them so well.”
The family started the dump in the late 1960s. It was a famed trove of furniture, appliances, books, clothes, bric-a-brac and other treasures. Elmer chatted about current events, town happenings and gossip, and often instructed shoppers that the arrival of hundreds of seagulls to the dump meant a storm was brewing.
Leroy managed and then owned the site after Elmer died in 1987. (Leroy’s brother, Stanley, who died two years ago, owned hundreds of acres north of Leroy’s property.)
Mr. Martinelli, who lives in Petaluma with his wife, Charmaine, still tinkers with appliances, engines and tractors in a small shop at the ranch.
“Sure, I’m going to miss coming out here,” he said as he drove his truck around the sometimes-bumpy dirt roads with his quiet 18-year-old dog, Spot, in the backseat. “It’s just one of those things. It’s changing times.”
Still, he was doubtful that it would sell quickly. “It’s gonna be a while,” he said, adding that at his age, “I want cash.”
“Two of my daughters will be well taken care of,” he said.
This isn’t the first time in recent years that a ranch has slipped out of the Martinelli line. The family long owned pasture across Highway 1, but sold the 276 acres to the National Park Service in 1987. The family had a reservation of use for 25 years, but when the park said Mr. Martinelli must run, not sublet, the grazing operation to keep his agricultural lease, the octogenarian relinquished his ties.