Santa Clara County just gained thousands of acres of protected open space, thanks to the purchase of two large ranch properties by a Palo Alto environmental nonprofit.
On Tuesday, the Peninsula Open Space Trust, or POST, announced that it had secured Mead Ranch, a 1,921-acre property in Santa Clara County’s Coyote Valley that was previously owned by members of the Bechtel family. The purchase comes several months after the nonprofit made headway into acquiring Sargent Ranch, a sprawling parcel at the southern terminus of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
At 6,500 acres, Sargent Ranch is the largest property that POST has purchased solely for conservation purposes, according to Gordon Clark, the organization’s president. POST has acquired portions of the property incrementally since 2024, and its most recent purchase of 2,284 acres in January leaves only 480 acres of the original property, which it plans to obtain in the future. The nonprofit has spent around $63 million to secure the ranch…