Rancho Sierra Vista Historic District: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, National Park Service

Eastman, Bright; Fitzgerald, Kathleen; Provencher, Shaun

Horse Ranch, a portion of Rancho Sierra Vista, is an 838.54‑acre property under National Park Service ownership in Newbury Park, Los Angeles County, California. The ranch consists of rolling pastureland at the foot of the Santa Monica Mountains and was originally part of Rancho Sierra Vista, a large cattle ranching operation which remains primarily intact and encompasses lands belonging to both the NPS and Point Mugu State Park. Originally developed by Carl Beal between 1936 and 1946, the majority of landscape features belonging to his development remain extant, a rare situation in the Santa Monica Mountains. Consequently, Rancho Sierra Vista is locally significant as a rural vernacular landscape district for the 1936‑1948 Beal period of development which remains as one of the last intact ranches from the first half of the twentieth century in the Santa Monica Mountains and their surrounding foothills. Landscape characteristics that comprise the integrity of the district include natural systems and features, spatial organization, land use, topography, vegetation, circulation, buildings and structures, and cluster arrangement. Throughout the proposed district, the original dirt roads through the hills continue to link the ranch cores to each other and to the outlying reservoir and agricultural areas, retaining the original circulation patterns. At the reservoir sites, historic topographical alterations to landforms continue to collect water in their original function, and portions of the associated water distribution features (essential to a ranching and agricultural endeavor in this area) are still found in the surrounding landscape. At all three central ranch cores, the majority of period buildings and structures, including houses, barns, sheds and corrals remain today. Although these are in varying condition from poor to good, they continue to represent the residential and utilitarian nature of life on the ranch with their associated ornamental vegetation and other landscape features. Collectively, the remaining features from the period of significance, situated in the open grass‑covered hills and valleys of the Santa Monica Mountains, continue to evoke the patterns of movement, land uses, and everyday life at Rancho Sierra Vista from 1936 to 1947. The condition assessment of "good" has been applied to this landscape due to the physical stability of the buildings, structures, and other landscape features of the ranch. However, the integrity of the landscape has been severely compromised due to the cumulative effects of removing historic features, and the addition of non‑compatible structures all without adequate assessment of the site's significance. While the extant features require no immediate action to maintain their current condition, further non‑compatible modifications to the buildings and site features will likely result in the complete loss of integrity for the site and diminish its potential for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

Rancho Sierra Vista Historic District: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, National Park Service

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