Following last year’s devastating wildfires that scorched millions of acres across California, Santa Clara is looking to sell Loyalton Ranch — a more than 10,000-acre property 30 miles north of Truckee that spans parts of Lassen and Sierra counties.
The city purchased the land in 1977 for $1.6 million with the hope it could be used to harvest steam and geothermal electric energy. But those efforts proved fruitless, and instead, the city has leased the land for cattle grazing.
On Tuesday evening, the Santa Clara City Council voted 4-3 to start the process of selling the land. Mayor Lisa Gillmor and council members Kathy Watanabe and Kevin Park cast the dissenting votes.
Over the years, the idea to sell the property has been floated numerous times, with the most recent push being led by Councilmember Suds Jain following the 2020 Loyalton fire.
City officials estimate that more than 90 percent of the rural property was burned during the fire. The fencing around the property was also largely destroyed.
“We’re sinking money in to rebuild the fences because if we don’t have fences we can have trespassers in there and they could get hurt there,” Jain said at an Aug. 17 council meeting. “It’s just time to sell this land.”
Loyalton Ranch was last appraised in May 2020 at $4.1 million — well below the $10 million Gillmor said the city could have gotten for the land several years ago. She worries that selling the property immediately after the fire and in a bad real estate market would be an injustice to Silicon Valley Power ratepayers since the public utility would collect the money from the sale.
“If we wait a couple of years and the market rebounds we might be able to even get close to that $10 million offer,” she said. “Just as none of you would sell your personal property in a depressed real estate market, I don’t think that the city should sell this property for the ratepayers in a depressed real estate market.”
In September, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife expressed interest in purchasing Loyalton Ranch to add it to the nearby Hallelujah Junction Wildlife for recreation and conservation purposes.
“The property is critical winter range for the migratory Loyalton-Truckee deer herd and well situated to add to a network of conserved lands in the area,” Joshua Bush, the department’s regional land acquisition coordinator wrote in a Sept. 27 email to the city.
Santa Clara will need to put out a bid to select a realtor and get an updated appraisal for the land before selling it.