Celebrity Travel
Rancho Santa Fe Is Where a Railway's Failed Eucalyptus Plan Became Old Money
A San Diego County enclave built by a railway company on a failed timber scheme became, by the 1930s, one of Southern California's most guarded old-money addresses, with a golf history that still draws names today.
Sep 25, 2026 · BigTravel.in
Rancho Santa Fe's origin story is a corporate accident. The Santa Fe Railway bought the land in 1906 to plant blue gum eucalyptus for railroad ties, only to discover the wood was too soft to hold spikes. Rather than write the land off, the railway's development arm rebranded the failed plantation as a planned village in 1921, hiring the architect Lilian Rice to design a settlement in a consistent Spanish Colonial Revival style that still governs the town's appearance a century later.
A golf course built the enclave's reputation
The Rancho Santa Fe Golf Club opened in 1929, designed by the course architect Max Behr, and from 1937 to 1947 hosted the Bing Crosby Clambake, an informal pro-am tournament pairing Hollywood names against touring professionals that drew large crowds before relocating to the Monterey Peninsula. That tournament's run cemented Rancho Santa Fe's identity as a golf-and-privacy retreat for entertainment money, decades before the sport's modern stars arrived on this stretch of Southern California coast.
A covenant that kept it small
The Rancho Santa Fe Association, formed to enforce the original development's design covenant, has kept the town without incorporated city status, strict on architecture and low on density, a combination that has preserved its rural, low-rise character even as San Diego's suburbs expanded around it. There are still no traffic lights within the historic covenant area, and estate lots remain large by regional standards, with equestrian trails threaded between them.
An enduring, quiet appeal
Unlike more visibly showy Californian enclaves, Rancho Santa Fe has stayed deliberately low-key, with no hotels of note inside the covenant itself and a village centre still built around a handful of shops and restaurants rather than boutiques aimed at visitors. Its appeal to residents, then as now, has rested on exactly that restraint: an old-money hush that Southern California's more photographed coastal towns generally can't offer.
Traveller tips
- Rancho Santa Fe has few public accommodations; most visitors base themselves in nearby Del Mar, Solana Beach or San Diego and drive in.
- The Rancho Santa Fe Golf Club remains private and members-only, with no public access to its course.
- The village centre's restaurants and the historic Inn at Rancho Santa Fe are open to non-residents and are the easiest way to see the town's architecture up close.
- San Diego International Airport is the nearest major airport, roughly a 30 to 40 minute drive depending on traffic.
Where this is
Rancho Santa Fe, California