The Peninsula Open Space Trust, a non-profit environmental group based in Palo Alto, made headlines in January when it closed the last significant part of a $63 million deal to buy the 6,500-acre Sargent Ranch, a vast property south of Gilroy that had been the center of battles since the 1990s over a proposed casino, subdivisions and most recently a gravel mine.
On Tuesday, the group secured another landmark property in Santa Clara County, announcing it had purchased Mead Ranch, a 1,921-acre parcel between San Jose and Morgan Hill, for $24.3 million.
The ranch, located in the picturesque rolling foothills along Uvas Road, will be preserved as open space, according to the organization, commonly known as POST. It’s the latest property in recent years to be set aside for wildlife, farming or open space in and around Coyote Valley, an area west of Highway 101 on San Jose’s southern edges where tech giants Apple and Cisco once proposed to build huge campuses in the 1980s and 1990s…