Green Pastures
Can a church, a land trust, and the memory of
a famous racehorse save Seabiscuit's ranch?
BY JAMES CONAWAY
In 1938, the Pimlico racetrack in Baltimore
was the scene of an epochal upset: The symbol of equine
hauteur—the famous War Admiral—was taken on by a somewhat
ungainly challenger named Seabiscuit, and defeated.
This Depression-era contest, long anticipated and
later described by Laura Hillenbrand in the bestseller
Seabiscuit: An American Legend as "one of the
biggest sports moments of the century," thrilled spectators,
and Seabiscuit touched something deep within the American
psyche. One journalist who covered racing wrote, "The
affection that this inarticulate brown horse had aroused
was a most amazing thing."
The following year, at the Santa Anita
racetrack in southern California, Seabiscuit badly
injured his left foreleg. Few people expected him
to recover, but recover he did. Not only did he run
his second most famous race at Santa Anita in 1940,
but he also won. Millions of Americans wiped out by
the Depression were faced with starting over, and
the example set by this triumphant, ragged-gaited
horse did a lot for the national morale.
Seabiscuit's surprising recovery had
taken place at a remote ranch in Mendocino County,
in northern California. A gorgeous, 5,000-acre spread
of blond meadowland, steep slopes, and towering conifers
on the east side of the Coast Range, Ridgewood is
today owned by a discreet religious group called Christ's
Church of the Golden Rule.
One of the church's representatives,
Tracy Livingston, is leading a tour of what's left
of Ridgewood's glory. "Seabiscuit was quite a character,"
he says. "Once he took a goat by the nape of the neck
and tossed it out of his stall. He tolerated a bantam
rooster sitting on his back." Livingston wears a baseball
cap, a denim shirt, and a gray beard of prophetic
density. He may be an elected member of the church's
advisory committee, but he is also a promoter of Seabiscuit's
memory and, it turns out, a strong advocate of land
conservation.
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