Family discord forces sale of historic ranch
Wools owned and worked the land for 100 years
“This has kind of been the center point for the family. We used to be a lot tighter.” — Bart Wool, 64, one of three kids of owners
Nearly 50 years ago, Sharon Wright drove her family’s cattle on horseback down Calaveras Road and into downtown Milpitas. Local police cleared the path from the family ranch in the San Jose foothills to the train depot.
Today, Milpitas has an outlet mall, growing suburbs and more than 5,000 tech employees working for Cisco and SanDisk. There are no more cattle drives.
“It makes me feel very old and sad,” said Wright, 67, one of three surviving children of Ernest and Bonnie Wool. “It’s changed so much.”
More change is ahead. The vast Wool family ranch, owned and worked by the same family for 100 years, is up for sale. Although the fam-
ily will surrender title to the land they’ve hunted and tilled for generations, they will not give up its history.
Over the last several decades, families of many longtime farmers and ranchers have cashed in on multi-million-dollar offers and moved out of the Bay Area. Recent years have brought record land prices.
But for the Wool family descendants — owners of roughly 800 acres of clear meadows, oak groves, wild game and expansive Bay views — the sale means the end of an era.
“This has kind of been the center point for the family,” said Bart Wool, 64, who lives on an adjacent property that’s also being sold. “We used to be a lot tighter.”
A rare breed
Wool Ranch is unusual in many ways — few family parcels have survived generations without being whittled down to small properties by descendants. And real estate agents say rarely will such a large tract be put up for sale in the Bay Area. Roughly 767 acres of the ranch is listed for $13.9 million, while an adjacent 20-acre parcel is priced at $1 million.
The land is zoned for agriculture, preventing its development into new tracts of housing.
Todd Renfrew, broker for the property, said it could be developed as a small estate with a ranch and stables, an oasis amidst the sprawling region. “You’re surrounded by hundreds of acres,” he said. “It’s a oneof-a-kind property.”
Local land trusts and government agencies with adjacent land have not expressed interest in the property, he said.
Paul Bernal, a local historian as well as a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge, said Wool Ranch is one of a few holdouts.
“In an area where most people move every 10 years or so, and the bank owns their home, it is unusual for a family to own a large estate for about 100 years,” Bernal wrote in an email.
Wool Ranch sits between the Mission Peak Regional Preserve and the Sunol Regional Wilderness. It was originally part of Rancho Los Tularcitos, an early 19th century Spanish land grant.
E.O. Wool bought the property off of Weller Road in Alameda County near Milpitas in 1919, having grown up in the area. His father, Fred Wool, founded F.G. Wool Packing Co. in San Jose, a business that survived until 1989 as one of the last family-owned and -operated canneries in the city.
E.O. was known as “Sandy” for his light complexion and red hair. The family grew walnuts, tomatoes, prunes and other fruits and took them to the family cannery for packing. Sandy Wool rose in local politics, serving on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors between 1937 and 1953. The county named a lake after him in Ed R. Levin Park.
The property passed along to his son, Ernest, after Sandy Wool died in 1968. Ernest Wool built a private indoor horse arena, one of the first in the state, and boarded horses at their Diamond W Stable. The Wools raised three boys and a girl on the property.
As a young girl, Wright took to the saddle and endlessly rode the property. Her brothers hunted and fished with their father. An uncle, Al Wool, filmed a nature documentary on the land.
They held family reunions in the pastures, swam in the cow ponds and galloped across the fields with wild horses. As kids, Wright said, “we were always in someplace we shouldn’t be.”
“It was a nice way to grow up,” her brother added.
Expanse for sale
About a decade ago, Ernest Wool, fearing a messy family dispute over his estate, listed the property for sale, family members said. But a solid offer never arrived. Wool died in 2015, leaving the multi-million dollar property to his four surviving and sometimes disputatious children.
The children deadlocked
“In an area where most people move every 10 years or so, and the bank owns their home, it is unusual for a family to own a large estate for about 100 years.”
— Paul Bernal, local historian “If we’d have thought more alike, we could’ve had a dynasty instead of a tragedy,” said Bart Wool, one of the surviving children of Ernest Wool, whose sale attempt failed.
on whether to sell parts of the land, keep parts, or grant smaller parcels to the survivors. They ended up in court, and a mediator decided the distribution of the estate. The ranch was put back on the market this spring.
The eldest son, Jeff of San Jose, died in June. A third brother, Scott, declined to comment.
“If we’d have thought more alike, we could’ve had a dynasty,” Bart Wool said, “instead of a tragedy.”
The horse stables property, which includes a few houses and a barn, is under contract to be sold for about $2.7 million. It’s expected to become a religious retreat.
A few prospective buyers have toured Wool Ranch, including a tech executive and a group of foreign investors. The sale will bring in millions fo dollars, but the brother and sister don’t see it as a lottery ticket.
Wool doesn’t know where he will move. He wants to make sure his two sons are settled. He’s grown tired of the “rude and impolite” traffic in the Bay Area.
Wool may join his sister in Shasta County. Wright moved from Santa Maria to a cattle ranch in Cottonwood, south of Redding. She hopes to buy a small ranch and stay a cowgirl.
“When you’re young,” Wool said, “you think things aren’t going to change.”
Wright agreed: “None of us were quite ready.”