On Tuesday, the Peninsula Open Space Trust, an environmental group based in Palo Alto, announced it had purchased the 1,921-acre Mead Ranch from the heirs of the late billionaire Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr., whose family had owned it since 1954, for $24.3 million.
The property is the most recent large ranch that the group, known as POST, has acquired in recent years in the hills surrounding Coyote Valley south of San Jose or in Coyote Valley itself, an area once slated by Apple and Cisco in the 1980s and 1990s for development but which San Jose leaders have prioritized for wildlife, open space, watershed, and farmland protection.
POST officials say they expect to transfer much of Mead Ranch to the Santa Clara Valley Habitat Authority, a government agency that preserves open space for wildlife. They also are considering allowing construction of a 1.5-mile segment of the Bay Area Ridge Trail through the ranch, a scenic oak-studded property that forms a key corridor for mountain lions, deer, and other wildlife.