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Once there were over a hundred buffalo grazing on the hills north of Corona del Mar.
Now there are apartments, condominiums, and very wide roads.
In 1954, Gene Clark, an ex-building contractor from Independence, Kansas, leased 115 acres of rolling grasslands from the Irvine Company.
On November 10, 1954, the Los Angeles Times wrote, “Preparations were being completed today to receive a shipment of three truck-and-trailer loads containing 72 buffalo... which are scheduled for arrival Saturday morning at the Newport Harbor Buffalo Ranch on MacArthur Blvd., according to Gene Clark, owner.”
Gene Clark didn’t waste any time opening the Ranch to the public.
The buffalo would arrive Saturday.
The public would be admitted Sunday, even though the official opening would not be until early 1955.
Some of Gene Clark’s more ambitious plans never happened.
In November 1955, Clark announced plans for a 2,000-seat auditorium for conferences, entertainment, and television programs; the 11,000 square-foot addition to the Buffalo Ranch would be themed to look like a traditional hay barn.
(The drawing at the top of this Yesterland article might be the architect’s rendering of the never-built auditorium.)
Compared to the other attractions that opened in Southern California in the 1950s—Marineland of the Pacific (1954-1987), Disneyland (1955- ), and Pacific Ocean Park (1958-1967)—the Newport Harbour Buffalo Ranch was not a major attraction.
But arguably it was the most unusual.
By the late 1950s, the area around the Buffalo Ranch was changing.
Across MacArthur Blvd., the Ford Motor Company had built a huge aerospace facility for their Aeroneutronic division.
Plans were in the works for a University of California campus a short distance from the Buffalo Ranch.
On October 15, 1959, the Los Angeles Times announced that the Buffalo Ranch would soon close forever.
The land had become too valuable to use as a tourist attraction in the five years since the Ranch had opened.
According to the newspaper, the operator was looking for a buyer for his herd of 17 buffalo.
Just 17 buffalo?
The herd had been over 100 in earlier years.
The Buffalo Ranch closed and all the buffalo were shipped out.
Architect William Pereira needed a regional office in the Irvine area.
The Regents of the University of California had hired him to design the new Irvine campus, and the Irvine Company had hired him to develop a master plan for the entire Irvine Ranch.
Pereira liked barns, so, in 1961, he transformed the Buffalo Ranch structures into an office campus called Urbanus Square.
Although the buffalo were all shipped out around 1960, Orange County residents remember seeing buffalo grazing near the former Buffalo Ranch as recently as the 1990s.
They weren’t hallucinating.
In 1981, Urbanus Square became Lange Financial Plaza, home of Lange Financial Corp. (or LFC).
In 1989, owner William Lange added a pen with four buffalo as a nod to the old Buffalo Ranch.
It seems that when you have buffalo, the Irvine Company cancels your lease five years later.
LFC had to move to make way for a road alignment and more intensive development of the land.
LFC’s new, more conventional office space would have no place for the animals—Becky, Happy, Rainbow, and Lucky.
In January 1994, the Orange County Fairgrounds bought Becky for their Centennial Farm.
At an auction in February 1994, Huntington Beach resident John Cogorno bought Happy, Rainbow, and Lucky to live on a ranch—and never to wind up as Buffaloburgers.
In May 1994, Becky gave birth to an 80-pound male calf, Tatonka, at the Fairgrounds.
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