Via Creek cuts through 345 acres of grassland north of Cayucos before reaching the Pacific Ocean.
Along the way, it passes through what was once an estuary, altered by berms built for duck ponds and concrete structures that interrupted the landscape. Closer to the water sits another relic of the property’s past: roughly 19 acres of concrete tanks and pipes, a hatchery, and a pump house left behind by an abalone farm that hasn’t operated since 2020.
Much of the property needs restoration, and members of yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini (ytt) Northern Chumash Tribe see it as an opportunity.
“We belong to the land, the ocean, the creeks, the rock outcroppings, the wetlands, and all of it awaits our return,” ytt Tribal Chair Mona Tucker told the California State Coastal Conservancy during a Sept. 17 meeting.
After roughly 250 years without a collective land base, ytt could soon have a place to return to.
During the Sept. 17 meeting, the Coastal Conservancy unanimously approved a $5 million grant to help ytt Northern Chumash Nonprofit purchase Alexander Ranch, bringing the tribe closer to acquiring a stretch of its ancestral coastline. The tribe plans to transform it into a place for ecological restoration, traditional food pathways, and passing cultural knowledge between generations.
The nonprofit entered into a purchase agreement with John Alexander’s estate in 2024 for the $18 million property. As of Sept. 28, the nonprofit had raised $13.5 million, including the recent conservancy grant, ytt Northern Chumash Nonprofit Operations Manager Abigail Harrison told New Times in an email.
That leaves $4.5 million to raise before escrow closes on Oct. 15.
Grant applications for roughly $3 million from the Wildlife Conservation Board and $2.27 million toward the acquisition from the Strategic Growth Council are pending.
“The funding is largely committed; the challenge is that state dollars take longer to disburse than a private sale allows,” Harrison said. “We’re working with partners on bridge solutions so the timing doesn’t cost us the land.”
If the nonprofit can’t complete the purchase, Harrison said the property would return to the open market, where it has been marketed for luxury coastal estates.
If successful, the nonprofit plans to establish the yatspasini wa yaktspu Conservancy, meaning “Ocean to Land Conservancy.”
The tribe is one of more than 55 non-federally recognized tribes in California and does not have a collective land base such as a reservation or rancheria.
“This opportunity gives us a chance to have a home base,” ytt Northern Chumash Nonprofit Board President Kelsey Shaffer told the Coastal Conservancy. “And not being federally recognized has not dissuaded us or discouraged us from being able to care for our homeland the way that we always have and the way that we always will.”
For generations, that work has taken place on land controlled by others.
“Every cultural burn, every gathering, has happened with someone else’s permission,” Harrison told New Times.
Having a place of its own would allow tribal families to gather on their own terms and elders to teach younger generations on the land itself, including tiłhini, fire, weaving, and food pathways.
“It would let ytt stewardship be planned in decades, not event by event,” Harrison said. “This is the continuation of a relationship that never ended.”
Alexander Ranch could bring together work the tribe has done with governments, nonprofits, and conservation organizations on grassland restoration, cultural burning, and marine stewardship.
Harrison said the first priority would be bringing tribal members back onto the land to gather, care for cultural sites, and begin stewardship under tribal governance.
Early work would include planning restoration of the Via Creek riparian corridor and estuary, returning tinɨtyu, or “good fire,” to support native plants, and assessing the former aquaculture facility for abalone and seaweed restoration.
Near the edge of the property sits the infrastructure of the former aquaculture operation, including a pipe reaching into the Pacific to pull seawater onto land.
Rachel Couch, a project manager with the Coastal Conservancy, presented the acquisition and said seawater intake systems like it are increasingly rare along the California coast because new ones are no longer being permitted.
The tribe plans to work with partners to rehabilitate the facility and eventually cultivate red, white, and black abalone for marine restoration, research, cultural use, and tribal food security. Seaweed and other shellfish could eventually grow there too.
Couch described the project as an opportunity to “restore and enable stewardship of a culturally important food resource.”
The aquaculture operation would be developed with Harmony Coast Aquaculture Institute, which currently holds a ground lease on the facility. Partnerships with Cal Poly and other researchers are also something ytt envisions.
The restoration would stretch inland from the old abalone farm.
Via Creek runs almost directly through the center of the ranch before entering the former estuary. Berms were historically constructed to create year-round duck hunting ponds, Shaffer said, while concrete structures further altered the area. The tribe plans to remove some of those structures and restore the creek and estuary.
Upstream, the Land Conservancy of San Luis Obispo County has spent the past decade protecting Via Creek’s headwaters through two conservation easements. The acquisition would put a key middle stretch of the creek into conservation as well, creating protection across nearly the entire watershed, according to Shaffer.
“It’s wonderful to see additional movement, additional land protection in the lower watershed,” Land Conservancy of SLO County Conservation Director Kyle Walsh told the Coastal Conservancy, “even more wonderful to see it led by our local tribe.”
The property is envisioned as a place for tribal and intertribal gatherings, youth programs, workforce training, ecological research, restoration, and traditional food cultivation.
For ytt, having somewhere for that knowledge to live matters.
A landless tribe can carry teachings through families and generations. It can work on other people’s land, partner with agencies, conduct cultural burns, and restore habitat, but Alexander Ranch could offer permanence.
“The truth is, the deep truth, the very old truth, [is] that instead of land belonging to us, we belong to the land,” Tucker said.
That permanence still hinges on whether ytt can complete the purchase.
“Two hundred and fifty years ago, our land was taken from us,” Tucker said. “But now for the first time in all those years, we have a chance to purchase land that will once again be tribal land.
“Help us return. We will care for this place as though our lives depend on it,” Tucker said, “because they do.” ∆
Reach Staff Writer Chloë Hodge at chodge@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Oct 1-8, 2026.
It’s my understanding that they have no claim to this land. The Salinan Tribe controlled the land from Salina’s to Santa Maria from the mountains to the sea. It’s amazing to me how well the “Northern Chumash” have pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes. The real Chumash are just as incredulous those who actually know the truth.