Ranch and Country Magazine – Our Story
Ranch & Country Magazine was born out of a dream – a dream of forever blue skies, clean fresh air, unobstructed open space, quiet star-lit nights, enjoyment of the great outdoors, and a love for growing things and for animals – with dogs and horses at the top of the list (and not necessarily in that order!)
In the early 1990’s Clark Franke and Linda Boston, husband and wife realtor team in the greater Los Angeles area, left behind the claustrophobic city life with its endless hustle and bustle and traffic noise and horns and sirens and smoggy skies and moved to the California Central Coast, in pursuit of that dream.
Once they were established in the Santa Ynez Valley, they thought, “There must be others in the Los Angeles who have the same dream we had, who want to get out of the city, even if just for a week-end but eventually as a permanent move. And thanks to our real estate marketing experience, we know how to find them!”
In 1995, they published the first issue of Ranch & Country Magazine as a vehicle to reach those who also had the dream. The print files were created on a Mac Computer with 500 megabytes of hard drive storage. The files were then saved on an external hard drive, affectionately named “Dark Wing.”
The magazine printed, and the marketing began. Copies for customer pick-up were mailed to key locations in the greater Los Angeles area. Advertisings to generate subscribers were placed in the Los Angeles Times and LA Business Journal. Databases of corporate executives and large business owners were purchased. Clark and Linda imagined professionals on the 19th floor of a Century City office building overlooking the sprawling urban setting while scrolling through Ranch & Country Magazine offerings.
This dream for a lifestyle change coincided with the transformational internet development that was occurring at the same time. In 1993, CERN released the source-code for the World Wide Web on a royalty-free basis. This set the foundation for anyone to use the internet to connect from anywhere. What followed was the development of browsers and software, and connectivity’s shift from dial-up to broadband. Personal computers became a household item.
By the late 1990’s, professionals could control their office desktop computer from a home personal computer in real time using an internet connection. This revolutionary development led to the “home office,” and the possibility of a living the dream while maintaining one’s urban professional life.
www.RanchAndCountry.com was launched in 1996. The website displayed the magazine logo and a couple of images, with some text. That was it! Web 2.0 began around 2004, which allowed a visitor to a website to interact with that website. Beginning in 2010, the current issue of Ranch & Country Magazine was made available to website visitors as a downloadable PDF file. Then in 2014, Ranch & Country Magazine launched it’s first digital flip magazine on the website. Ranch & Country became a print plus digital publisher!
Ranch & Country Magazine has endured through decades that have had many challenges. The “internet bubble” at the turn of the century was just a blip in realizing the country living dream. The financial crises of 2008 squeezed every part of the country, both urban and rural. But urban areas took the hardest hit, with spread of poverty, crime, and decay. The situation strengthened the growing desire to get out of the city, and into a better quality of life. And then in 2020, the COVID crisis revealed that living in less populated areas was a big plus in the face of a spreading pandemic.
Ranch & Country Magazine’s stated commitment has not changed since it printed on the Table of Contents page of first issue in1995. It is this:
“Ranch & Country Magazine is committed to a lifestyle – one that lives in harmony with the land and with all forms of life that make up the natural world, one that sees the earth as a place of peace and seeks peace in all situations, one that appreciates freedom of movement in the open country, the opportunity to breathe clean air and slow down and listen to the stars, one that recognizes what is precious and beautiful in all life, and one that contributes to the greater good by valuing even the least of these – knowing full well the common “chord” that binds us all.”
Enjoy this walk down memory lane which celebrated our 30-year Anniversary