Story and Photos by George Alfaro • Bay City News
PART 2 | April 2, 2026
ON A CHILLY BUT DRY WINTER WEEKEND in January 2025, Kevin Lunny, surrounded by family and long-time friends, set out on a routine round-up to herd roughly 100 head of cattle from the grasslands along the Point Reyes Seashore coast back into corrals at Historic G Ranch.
The property, spanning 1,400 acres of coastal grasslands, streams and rolling hills, sits across the road from Drakes Estero, nestled between the Pacific Ocean and Abbotts Lagoon. For most of the year, the cattle roam the hunter-green pastures, grazing on plentiful vegetation and wandering freely until they reach the fine sands of the shoreline.
The winter roundup had become second nature for Kevin, with dozens of roundups under his belt from working on the ranch over the years, as his father and grandfather had done before him.
But this year’s roundup came with a sense of foreboding. The Lunnys knew their days roaming the peninsula’s pastures alongside their herd were coming to an end. Under terms of a settlement with the Nature Conservancy and an environmental coalition, they and 11 other ranches were to vacate Point Reyes by April 8 of this year.
On this January weekend, Kevin led a convoy of two side-by-side all-terrain vehicles and two dirt bikes as the group crossed the untamed grasslands, soggy and vigorously sprouting. The column scattered, covering as much ground as needed to rein in all the cows, steers, heifers, calves and yearlings.
A simple whistle and a few words of encouragement were enough to guide the herd back into the corral. There, the yearlings were separated from the rest of the herd to be tagged, castrated and vaccinated.
It was a ritual that went back to 1869, when the Historic G Ranch was established on this site. Over the years, the property changed hands multiple times, being acquired at one point by the Radio Corporation of America, with some land partitions involving the U.S. Coast Guard.
In 1947, Kevin Lunny’s grandfather Joseph Lunny Sr. took over the operation, and it’s been the family business since then, switching from dairy to beef production in 1975.
In the January 2025 roundup, Kevin’s 94-year-old dad Joe Jr. worked in the corral alongside his great granddaughter, Isabella Mata, age 6. Joe held a mug that read, “Weird being the same age as old people.”
Nancy Lunny, married to Kevin, maintained the ranch’s comprehensive records, accounting for every head in the herd. Her journal bore the kind of wrinkles and creases that only come with time.
But now, as one of the 11 families who had accepted the $30 million buyout financed by The Nature Conservancy in exchange for relinquishing their lease, the Lunny’s were required to empty out every structure on the property, vacate their World War II army barracks-turned-home and either sell off or relocate their herd elsewhere per settlement terms.
Although all parties to the settlement are bound by a non-disclosure agreement, the widely reported amount received by each cattleman and dairyman was $2.5 million to $3 million for their seashore leases. This figure is not nearly enough to establish a ranch in Marin County, so the ranchers went elsewhere. For the Lunnys, it meant selling the business and relocating to Auburn, where Kevin still owns four cows.
Most ranchers go through life thinking their children and grandchildren will one day take up the family cattle ranch, and Kevin had been no different.
Watching each generation come together had always made him smile.
But now, five generations of family history and 150 years of ranching on the site had come to an end, leaving only impressions on the topsoil where corrals and loafing barns once stood.
