A Mother’s Intuition

When I asked Chuck King for an interview, he modestly suggested there are far more interesting people in the Valley to write about. In our first minutes together in the conference room of his Los Olivos Realty office, I thought for a moment he might be right. But then, I realized, he has a cowboy mentality—a bit shy, slow to start, honest to a fault, and with a mind like a steel trap that, given time, overflows with evermore fascinating stories of local history.  

 

Local history, in this case, is not a distant concept to King. His great grandmother, Maria Antonio Orena, was the youngest of thirteen children born to Jose Antonio de la Guerra, the last commandant of the Santa Barbara Presidio. King’s maternal grandmother was of pure Spanish decent and married an Englishman named Rickard. King’s paternal grandfather was a naval academy instructor in Annapolis, MD. His father was a career naval officer, and so King grew up a Navy junior, spending the earliest years of his life in the Philippines and China just prior to WWII. Family lore maintains that his first playmate was General McArthur’s son.

 

“We lived all over, but Los Alamos has always been home.” King says remembering days spent on the ranges of his family’s ranchland. In the 1830’s Jose de la Guerra was granted the San Julian and Los Alamos land grants totaling almost 100,000 acres. In the 1840’s Maria Antonia acquired several land grants from the original grantees, two of which comprised over 70,000 acres in the Cuyama Valley.

 

Locally, Maria Antonia acquired the Corral de Quate and La Zaca land grants which comprised about 18,000 acres and ran from Los Olivos toward Zaca Lake and half way to Los Alamos. Over the generations most of the land granted to Jose de la Guerra or acquired by Maria Antonia Orena, has been broken up and sold off, however, there are still several thousand acres owned and, or operated by various cousins and family members.

 

Somewhere along the line King grew to become a product of both his heritage and his environment, in equal measure. After high school, he enlisted in the Marine Corps and is proud of having served, but relieved that the most exciting action he saw was making background scenes for the movie South Pacific.  “If you look fast, I’m in the Thanksgiving Day scene.” King says.

 

Released from active duty in 1958, King opted to obtain a business degree at UCSB when he discovered that the ratio of women to men worked in his favor. Not the soundest reasoning he admits, but even with a business degree King found him self drawn back to Los Alamos and cattle ranching. In 1962 Chuck and his brother Bill formed King Brothers Cattle Company and leased a ranch near Parkfield in Monterrey County. A few years later they bought their mother’s herd and leased the home ranch at Los Alamos, a portion of which Bill and his family still use as headquarters for their cattle operation.

 

In 1973 King sold his interest to his brother and obtained a real estate license. “I thought I would try selling ranches instead of operating them,” he says. He felt that his knowledge of ranches and ranch operations, as well as ranching acquaintances throughout the state would be beneficial. King started with Sunset Company Realtors and then worked eighteen years with his friend and mentor T. Hayer. When another good friend, Tom Le Pley, opened Los Olivos Realty he joined that firm and remains there today.

 

As much as he tries, nothing can keep King away from the cattle. One of the reasons he chose to become a real estate broker was because he felt that the time constraints would be flexible enough that he could still maintain a cattle operation. “It just kind of gets in your blood,” he says. He formed Vaquero Cattle Company and, over the years, with the aid of several partners, principally Denny Strong, King was able to maintain a cow herd and run yearlings on leased land in Happy Canyon. In 2005 he sustained an injury which necessitated liquidating his herd. Now that he has recovered, he is looking forward to getting involved again, “if it ever rains.”

 

King has seen a lot of changes in the local ranching community during his lifetime. Fewer ranches, less grazing land and fewer cattle, but he feels that there will always be cattle grazed in the area. He’s encouraged by the number and quality of young people showing an interest in cattle ranching. He is confident that the ranching traditions established by his ancestors and others over the last 150 years will carry on for many generations to come.

 

King’s three daughters, Teri, Tina and Caci and his stepdaughter Sarah, all grew up around horses and cattle and participated in gymkhanas and junior rodeos. Chuck feels strongly about these traditions, which is why he rides every year with the Rancheros Visitadores, an organization of which his grandfather was a founding member. He is a member of the Society of Los Alamos as well, and two years ago, King and his brother were chosen to be the Honorary Vaqueros at the Old Spanish Days Fiesta Rodeo.

 

King is involved in all aspects of cattle ranching, but he prefers running yearlings, even though it’s a little riskier. With this type of operation, calves are obtained in the fall and turned out to pasture where they will hopefully gain 200 - 300 pounds, at which time they are sold, sent to pasture or placed in a feedlot. “It’s a part of the cattle business that works well with real estate.” King says. That balance is important. It is a way to appease his head for business and his heart for cattle, both of which take him out on the open range where he can stay in touch with the land he’s loved equally as a boy and a man.