In September 1976, Jack and Mary English were hunting with their fourteen-year-old son, Dennis, in the woods east of Big Sur, California. A 260-square-mile section of national forest with rugged peaks, hidden valleys, and hot springs, the Ventana Wilderness is located in a region known for having California’s largest density of mountain lion, and abundant wild hogs, turkeys, and deer. While Jack and Dennis were off tracking deer, Mary encountered a small group of twenty-something hikers who were looking around curiously. They said they’d read a classified ad in the local newspaper: someone was auctioning off a 5-acre plot somewhere in the middle of this national forest in a place called Pine Valley. The hikers had found the right spot. Later, after they’d left and Jack and Dennis returned, Mary relayed the news. “Somebody is gonna get this land,” she said. “It’s gonna be us.”

Since 1930, when Jack was eleven, he had been frequenting Pine Valley to hike, camp, hunt, and fish for rainbow trout. His family lived on a farm about 50 miles north, as the crow flies. Surrounded by a forest of ponderosa pine, Pine Valley is accessible only on foot or on horseback via a pair of dusty trails that descend and meander over 6 miles through the rocky Santa Lucia Mountains. Around 1880, after the passage of the Homestead Act, settlers began staking claims on 160 acres in and around Pine Valley. Over the years, families continued trading back their undeveloped parcels to the Forest Service. Jack had come to know one 15-acre plot well. It was situated right along a stream, near a sunny pasture, below a massive sandstone formation that glows in the moonlight. There were dilapidated remains of an old cabin, but no one had lived there in years. So in 1936, when Jack was seventeen, he contacted the owner. She wouldn’t take less than $1,000 per acre. (For all 15 acres, that translates to roughly $257,000 today.) Oh, well, Jack figured.

After serving in World War II, Jack returned home and found work as a carpenter. By then, he’d met and married Mary, a feisty pig farmer’s daughter who was a descendant of Abraham Lincoln. “She was a cute one,” Jack recalls. “Five foot two, a hundred and five pounds, and never varied much.” He nicknamed her Scrumptious. Together, the couple traveled to the backwoods of Alaska and Canada on hunting trips. Jack built them a house in Soquel, a two-hour drive from Pine Valley. Jack and Mary made the trek frequently. When Dennis was six months old, they brought along their son. By the time he was a teenager, the family had spent countless days on the trails and nights camping. So in 1976, when the opportunity presented itself for Jack and Mary to claim a small piece of Pine Valley, they didn’t hesitate.