"The Back Story"
Our working ranch is nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada near Bakersfield and Fresno and provides a superb backdrop for retreats, live music, camping. About Us
River Ridge Ranch's foothill location in Tulare County is convenient to most of the Southern San Joaquin Valley from Bakersfield to Fresno. Just a short drive from Porterville, Exeter, Lindsay, Visalia, Dinuba, H
anford, Kingsburg, Lemoore, Delano, Turlock, Tulare, and Selma. If you're from Los Angeles or the Bay Area, we provide a beautiful and very affordable space for meeting up with friends from throughout California. River Ridge Ranch is a unique combination of working ranch, recreation and education guest ranch in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. The environmentally-conscious 722-acre ranch includes the Tule River and borders the 323,000 acre Giant Sequoia National Monument. River Ridge Institute is a charitable non-profit that teaches sustainable and regenerative land use practices on River Ridge Ranch. We are about three hours from L.A. and less than five hours from San Francisco. When Gary and Barbara bought the old Negus Ranch in 1998 they didn’t have an outdoor wedding venue in mind. They bought what was to become River Ridge when it looked as if the land would end up as a major housing development on the Tule River. Barbara and Gary thought they had a better idea- they just didn’t know what it was! Gary Adest and Barbara Brydolf live in Springville, CA (population 1100). Both are trained in biology- he in Evolutionary Biology and Ecology- she in Molecular Genetics. Since 1990 they have worked together on a variety of field research projects in Wildlife Biology in Mexico, the deserts of the southwestern United States and now in the Sierra Nevada foothills. By working with their local land trust and a number of partners and donors, they were able to place a conservation easement on the ranch and market the development rights. River Ridge is now fully protected forever and will remain a haven for people seeking personal restoration and recreation and for the flora and fauna which abound on the property. In order to afford the costs of the property, mortgage, taxes, improvements and upkeep, Barbara and Gary decided to do what they knew best: to teach people about the outdoors. They also ended up learning to do what they knew nothing about: managing the day-to-day affairs of a working cattle ranch, a grazing regimen and the myriad of details in planning and providing for people to have a rewarding and memorable experience when visiting their ranch for weddings and other special events. River Ridge Ranch & Institute also is a presence in the local community. Each year hundreds of school children from throughout Tulare County visit the ranch for a free day of outdoor education. River Ridge is a partner in a California Department of Fish and Game program named Trout in the Classroom and fourth and fifth-graders spend a day learning about watersheds, the water cycle and river ecology. During the spring and fall, River Ridge provides live music through its Sunday Series. Every Fall on the first Saturday in November we host our Foothills Festival- a celebration of the beauty and importance of the natural world in the Sierra foothills. When you choose River Ridge, you choose the ancient home of the Foothill Yokuts, you choose a landscape that is forever protected from development, you choose a venue that reduces, re-purposes, recycles and reuses.
