[Image: Flickr]
If you had R20 for every time you daydreamed about escaping to somewhere like Silver Ridge Stables, you still wouldn’t have enough for the R18 million price tag – but at least you would still have a dream?
This place sprawls over 277 acres of rugged paradise, right on the edge of North Table Mountain in Butte County. It rubs shoulders with an ecological reserve — same name, obviously — where California’s moody cliffs throw down against a seriously rich slice of history.
At the southeast tip of this fairy tale lies Phantom Falls, a waterfall that only shows up in spring like a part-time influencer. The moment the mountain bursts into bloom with wildflowers, the Instagram crowd shows up in full force, phones out, filters ready. It’s dramatic. It’s fleeting. It’s basically California’s own Coachella for plants.
As it stands, all of it — the trails, three homes, some moody old olive orchards and epic views of the Sacramento Valley — is listed for $988,000. That’s just under R18 million more than what I have, and you?
The current owners turned it into a guest ranch, which sounds like code for “quiet sanctuary for the rich and emotionally fried.”
After 25 years running the place, Danny Cuneo reckons she’s heard this line more times than she can count:
“It was magic to come to the ranch.”
It wasn’t always Instagram-perfect, though. Cuneo and her partner, Dan Nichols, spent decades grafting — horse boarding, equestrian programs, even therapeutic riding schools — literally building their dream life hoof by hoof.
“My personal adventure had allowed me over the 25 years to bring the ranch back,” she said. “We restored the big house so that we could live in it,” turning a rundown mess into a home for horses, humans, and the occasional owl with commitment issues.
“It was like an archaeological find,” she added. “There were things everywhere that were just unique about it.”
This isn’t just a pretty chunk of land, it’s stitched into American history, for better and worse. Cuneo said the place goes all the way back to the 1860s, when it was handed to one Sgt. Peter Duffy — via a land grant signed by Abraham bloody Lincoln himself — during a dark chapter of violence against California’s Indigenous people.
Duffy started herding sheep, and by the early 1900s, the land was all about cattle. Then came the railroad boom, the Gold Rush, Victorian everything, and someone had a go at olive farming (which clearly didn’t catch on — probably needed more feta).
In 1915, some oke built a big house on the butte and ushered in what Cuneo calls “a period of modernisation that continued into the 1930s.” But by the ’70s, things fizzled. The ranch was left to sleep until Cuneo and Nichols rolled in, woke it up, and made it breathe again.
And the land? It gives back. Not in stocks or crypto, but the old-school way.
“We do have amazing springs that have always been the water source,” Cuneo said. “Very healthy and very potable.”
“So there’s something magical about that.”
Today, what was once just sleepy ranchland is now a global bucket-list spot. Blame social media. Phantom Falls became the star of a million Reels and Stories — wildflowers, waterfalls and all.
“It’s always been well-known to go to North Table Mountain for the spring flowers,” she said. “Magnificent.”
Now? “Phantom Falls is very well known and has been on the cover of several magazines in California.”
Locals used to struggle to find it, because there’s “no public access,” Cuneo explained, and would mission across Table Mountain like budget explorers. But thanks to Google and the GPS gods, the world knows exactly where to go now.
“With the onslaught of social media and Google,” she said, “information about it became more easily accessible.”
Here’s the kicker: the end of the ranch’s road is literally the closest point to the falls. So naturally, instead of hiking, confused tourists pop into her barn like it’s a visitor centre.
“We have made very large signs,” she said, politely telling them to bugger off back to Highway 70 and find the actual trail.
Still, Cuneo isn’t mad about it. She’s met people from “just about every nation” through those surprise visits.
“Amazing,” she calls it. Even when people show up in high heels or flip-flops, ready to conquer the wilderness.
“We always remind them that this is wild country,” she said, listing threats like rattlesnakes, deer, coyotes and poison oak — basically the anti-Sandton. She affectionately refers to these types as “city folk,” with a grin that says “bless their cotton socks.”
But here’s the real heart of it: Silver Ridge isn’t just for horse people or ranch types with deep pockets and big hats. It’s for anyone who wants to feel the land breathe.
“People with imagination could do anything,” she said. “It could be anything you want.”
Well, maybe. If your imagination comes with a decent credit score.
[Source: SF Gate]
