Neverland: Michael Jackson's Ranch in the Hills
Near Los Olivos, California
About five miles north of Los Olivos, along Figueroa Mountain Road at the edge of the Los Padres National Forest, lies a large estate once known around the world as Neverland. The land began as a working ranch and was developed in the early nineteen eighties by a property developer who called it Sycamore Valley Ranch. In March of nineteen eighty-eight the singer Michael Jackson bought the property, with sale figures reported anywhere from around nineteen and a half million to thirty million dollars, and turned it into both his home and his private amusement park.
He named it Neverland after the island in Peter Pan where children never grow up, and filled it with garden statues, carnival rides, a small railroad, and a petting zoo. Jackson lived there from nineteen eighty-eight until two thousand five, when, shortly after being acquitted of child sexual abuse charges in a trial held nearby, he left and never returned. He kept ownership until his death in two thousand nine.
The estate, renamed Sycamore Valley Ranch, was later listed for as much as one hundred million dollars. After years on the market and falling far in value, it sold in two thousand twenty for about twenty-two million dollars to the businessman Ronald Burkle, a longtime friend of the Jackson family.
