Photos by Joseph A. Garcia / Star staff "There is so much work to do" now that the landscape and buildings of King Gillette Ranch are public land, says Rorie Skei, chief deputy director for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. "This is a dream realized."

Multimedia: King Gillette Ranch

Now a public Park, the 600-acre property is now open to the public. Take a video tour of the property.
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Over the years, the valley of sweeping grasslands and towering oaks in western Los Angeles County has been home to Chumash Indians, a disposable-razor baron, Hollywood moguls, Catholic monks, cult leaders and a Japanese Buddhist university.

Now, it belongs to you.

After 30 years of trying to turn the King Gillette Ranch into public property, the land most recently owned by Soka University opened to visitors last month. The university agreed to sell the property for $35 million, and it was purchased with funding from 11 public and private sources.

"This is a dream realized," said Rorie Skei, chief deputy director for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

For as long as Skei has been with the conservancy, she's been working to get the property. Now that the land is in public hands, she and the others from the representative agencies have their work cut out for them.

"Oh my God, there is so much work to do," she said as she toured the more than 600 acres of landscape and buildings, some in pristine condition, others sagging from years of neglect.

The grand vision for what to do with the land off Mulholland Drive is as vast as the mountains that surround it. Though the final plan is still being debated, Skei and other invested parties have a big wish list.

A mission-style mansion

At the center of the property is the enormous mansion that King Gillette, the inventor of the safety razor, had constructed in the late 1920s by famed Southern California architect Wallace Neff. Built in the traditional Spanish mission style, it has tiled fountains, stucco archways and a grand veranda on which a young Judy Garland was photographed when the mansion was owned by the director Clarence Brown.

The building is largely in good shape and, Skei said, it will be open for tours and be available for private parties and weddings. The mansion overlooks manicured lawns with oak trees casting long shadows and a white swan swimming through a pond. Rental for the site starts at $8,000.

Other corners of the property aren't as well maintained, but plans for what they could become are in the works. An old stable that Neff designed is going to become a visitors center for the entire Santa Monica Mountains, where visitors can learn about the cultural and geographical history of the land untouched by Southern California's sprawl.

Woody Smeck, superintendent of Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, said attendance at the current visitor center off Hillcrest Drive in Thousand Oaks is low because too few people know of it. It's closer to a shopping mall than it is to the heart of the park.

"This site will allow us to establish a visitors center at a major gateway to the park," he said of Gillette Ranch.

It will take a few years and millions of dollars to restore the building, which has been inhabited by rats since it was boarded up and left to fall apart.

Building tapped for offices

Other buildings will need less work before they are usable.

An administration building that was constructed when the Claretian Order of the Catholic Church owned the property will be used to house the headquarters for the Angeles District of the California Department of Parks and Recreation and the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Having both offices in one building will help the two agencies work better and share resources, said Ron Schafer, district superintendent for the Angeles District of state parks. About 26 state parks employees and 115 from the National Park Service will work there. The two agencies could move into the building by the end of next year.

Another addition by the monks was a three-story dormitory, which is now planned for use as a hub for outdoor education. The building could house inner-city children who come to the ranch for multiday field trips.

"We want to get kids to the parks," said Schafer.

Other plans include interpretive hikes on the history of the property, from how part of "Gone with the Wind" is rumored to have been shot there to how the land was once the center of an immense Chumash settlement.

The area is not just significant for people, but wildlife, too. The land will connect other parks and open space that surround it, tying in wildlife corridors and giving the mountain lions, bobcats and mule deer plenty of room to roam.

Trails could be built that would connect the Gillette property to nearby lands so visitors would have a seamless hiking experience among the properties.

But all this costs money.

"We could easily spend $2 million on the property this year," Skei said.

Room for movie sets

Beyond trying to garner revenue by renting the location out, Skei hopes Hollywood will come knocking. Besides the obvious potential of the buildings and the grand eucalyptus-lined entranceway in movies and commercials, the open space around the property could be used to build entire sets.

The park has about $500,000 in the bank and gets consistent funding from Proposition 84, which funds the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, but the ideas for what could become of the ranch can sometimes outstrip the budget.

Skei said she's confident revenue sources will be found. After 30 years of fighting, she's come a long way to be able to call the land public.

"This site has always been identified as the heart of the Santa Monica Mountains," she said. Now she can wrap her arms around it.