I had the pleasure of visiting last June the Reagan Ranch in the remote Santa Ynez Mountains northwest of Santa Barbara, CA, where Ronald and Nancy Reagan spent so much of their time from 1974-1994.

The Reagan Ranch was in the news constantly in the 1980s as the “Western White House.” But it was far harder to get to than, say, Nixon’s posh Western White House on the beach in Orange County.

My visit taught me a lot about the sacrifices Nancy Reagan made for her man.

After finally arriving after a ride reminiscent of the one up to Machu Picchu, I couldn’t help thinking about the closing couplet to the Green Acres theme song:

You are my wife! Goodbye city life!

The Reagans bought the 688 acre ranch of grasslands and forest for $527,000 in 1974.

How do you get such a fine piece of property at such a reasonable price? Size, price, location: pick two. Reagan picked size and price and left it to Nancy, a Pacific Palisades socialite, to deal with the mountaintop location.

The story of Nancy going to look at the property for the first time where she would spend months in exile away from the social life she loved is poignant. Santa Barbara is nice, but then it turned out they had to drive a long way west on the 101 beyond Santa Barbara. Well, that wasn’t so bad, Nancy said. Then they turn inland up a canyon, passing an occasional house or cabin. That seemed a little bucolic for her tastes. After 9 winding miles, a 1 lane road left the slightly civilized canyon bottom and, to Nancy’s horror, switchbacked for 7 miles straight up a mountainside, coming out upon an isolated saddle a half mile above sea level: The name “Rancho del Cielo” is not an exaggeration.

The house is cozy, around 1600 square feet. The inside decor is ranch rustic. I don’t think there was central heating so they relied on a roaring fire (but I could be wrong about it). The house is under some large oaks for shade so the lack of air conditioning wouldn’t be too much of a problem: the climate 2500 feet up on the crest of the Santa Ynez is exhilarating. There’s a small pond.

The future President liked it for all the hard work left to be done on the ranch. Over the next decade, he and two blue-collar buddies (retired California highway patrolman who had been Reagan’s bodyguards in Sacramento) and who stayed in the small bunkhouse behind the main house, built by hand an endless fence for the ranch’s horses, finishing up around the beginning of his second term in the White House.

The chores! The stores!

Nancy’s one luxury was a telephone line so she could stay in contact with her friends.

A lot about the Reagan Ranch, such as how Reagan organized his garage, reminded me of my father, who was born in Illinois about 6 years after the President was. He would have liked to have owned the Reagan Ranch. My mother was the same age as Nancy Reagan and looked a little bit like her; my mom paid attention to how Mrs. Reagan dressed when she was first lady of California and the U.S. The Reagans were married at the Little Brown Church on Coldwater Canyon near my parents’ house.

I’m thus imputing to Ronald and Nancy a lot based on my parents, but let’s just say that my father would have been much, much more enthusiastic about spending time at his mountaintop ranch than my mother would have been.

In particular, the Reagan Ranch wasn’t really cut out for entertaining guests. The main house is quite small and I don’t think overnight guests were welcome in it. When Queen Elizabeth II visited the ranch in 1983 (during a famous El Nino rainstorm — the Queen, who was used to driving up mountains during the downpours at Balmoral Castle, offered to take the wheel when the driver became worried about the road washing away), the Windsors were, I believe, relegated to the bunkhouse where the President’s fence-building buddies stayed. (Or, possibly, by this pointed, they’d added another small bungalow.) I think Reagan’s White House aides usually stayed in Santa Barbara and commuted up the mountain.

The point of the Reagan Ranch was for Reagan to get away from it all. Nancy, in contrast, liked being in the center of it all, but she put up with her many mountaintop exiles for Ron’s sake.

After the ex-President became too infirm to safely visit his beloved ranch in the mid-1990s, Nancy Reagan, having spent more than enough time there for one lifetime, sold it to the Young America Foundation.

They intended to turn it into a summer camp for young conservatives. Over the years, the plans morphed and instead they built themselves a nice location down in Santa Barbara right near the pier. My guess is that they got worried that if they brought in conservative college students to bunk at the ranch, some would drive down to Santa Barbara to sample the nightlife and then get themselves killed trying to make it back up the hairpin road. So, the Foundation prudently centered its operations in downtown S.B. with just a bus tour to the Ranch.

The Reagan Ranch is exactly what my father would have bought for himself in 1974, assuming he’d been fairly rich and could somehow have talked my mother into it, which I don’t think he could have. But Nancy put up with the isolation and inconvenience because it made her husband happy.