The National Park Service is in the midst of appraising a 52-acre Marshall ranch formerly operated by the Dunn family, whose reservation of use and occupancy expired last fall.
Two informal proposals for the land, which is owned by the Golden Gate National Recreation Area but controlled by the Point Reyes National Seashore, have come before the National Park Service. One would fold the property into Audubon Canyon Ranch’s 500-acre Cypress Grove Preserve and research center that abuts the land on three sides. The other was submitted by Albert Straus of Straus Family Creamery, who envisions offering the land to young farmers.
“The park has eliminated so many houses in West Marin,” Mr. Straus told the Light. “I really see this as an opportunity for the park to give back to the community, by helping support more people living and doing agriculture on the coast.”
The ranch lies outside of the 18,000 acres of ranchlands that the park service is considering in its amendment to the seashore’s general management plan, and it has not been in active agriculture for at least two decades.
“The reservation of use and occupancy that the Dunn family has held for around the past 20 years was just to have seven horses,” park spokesman John Dell’Osso said. Horses do not qualify as an agricultural use, and though the property was originally zoned A.R.P., or agricultural-residential, the county’s zoning does not apply to federal property.
Once the appraisal is completed, the park service plans to conduct a public process to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, Mr. Dell’Osso said. That process will inform the park as it determines the land’s new use.
The Dunns did not apply to renew their lease agreement for the property, which is home to seven structures, including a house, a horse stable, a former creamery and fallow pastures. (Nancy Dunn, the leaseholder, also sublet one unit on the property.)
Last fall, the East Shore Planning Group heard that the family would be ending its lease and facilitated a meeting to get a better sense of the park’s plans. According to George Clyde, who serves on the group’s board of directors, both Audubon Canyon Ranch and Mr. Straus presented their proposals.
The group agreed by vote that “both plans would satisfy our objective to preserve the land, and not to have a big impact,” Mr. Clyde recalled.
The ranch dates back to the age of the Civil War, when it was part of General Henry Halleck’s Tomales Bay and Nicasio holdings, according to local historian Dewey Livingston. In the 1860s, Charles Miller leased 212 acres with a house near the current location of the ranch buildings; the land continued to change hands and, in the mid-1940s, it was sold to W. Hall. Later, Tony and Margaret Matteri ran a dairy there in the 1950s and 1960s.
Ms. Dunn sold the property to the park service in 1992 for $3.5 million, after living there for around 20 years.
Reached this week, the executive director of Audubon Canyon Ranch, John Petersen, said he hopes the property can be “maintained for its conservation value” and that the organization is “open to helping in any way we can.”
But Mr. Straus, whose activism centers around affordable housing as much as promoting agriculture, has other ideas.
The vision he presented to the planning group last year—dubbed “Revitalizing Rural Communities, Agriculture and Conservation”—aimed to address various issues facing West Marin, including the need for affordable housing and a next generation of farmers.
The plan calls for a partnership between the park service and local nonprofits focused on sustainable agriculture or affordable housing, such as the Marin Agricultural Land Trust or the Community Land Trust Association of West Marin. In the proposal, the existing structures would provide housing for farmers while they learned and experimented with small-scale production.
Mr. Straus said the idea was inspired by a model in Cuyahoga Valley National Park, in Ohio. In that park, the nonprofit Cuyahoga Valley Countryside Conservancy has facilitated and monitored farming leases since 1999.
The decision-making process is just as important to him as the property’s future, however. “Foremost, I would like to see the park gather public input on this transition, rather than it being done behind closed doors, so we can see what really works for the community,” Mr. Straus said.